What are you playing?

[Hamarr]

Prey is another one of those games that I loved playing when it first came out but just stopped for some reason. I'm a sucker for these Deus Ex/System Shock 2 type games. I decided to fire it up again after watching Skill Up's review for Death Loop.  That game isn't grabbing me, but I love the art direction.  Skill Up did mention that     Mooncrash had some similar ideas to Deathloop but were executed better.  Maybe I will fire that up after I finish Prey.

No idea how far I am into it, but the Nightmare is now chasing me occasionally.

[Hamarr]

I also picked up RE8 Gold Edition. I've never played it before but wanted to jump in on the third person mode. Do I need to go back and play RE7?  Hearing about fighting some of the bosses multiple times put me off of the game after playing RE6. Some of those bosses wouldn't die and it just dragged on. Also, I'm probably too chicken for first person mode.

How scary was this originally?  Third person seems to break some of the immersion a tad.  It feels slightly like RE4, but the guns so far don't do a lot of damage and I am running out of bullets pretty quickly. The knife definitely isn't as powerful as in 4.  Is RE7 more like the older RE games?  I only played it up to where you try to escape and then wake up at the table with the family.

You don't need to play RE7, but like the whole story-side is directly related to RE7 both the main game of RE8 and the need DLC expansion, so at least reading a summary of RE7's plot is probably worth it.

RE7 is sort of a mix between the older games and light FPS. RE8 was never scary even in 1st person and is an action game like RE4/RE5.

Both RE7 and RE8 are pretty good games.

I'm going to have to pick up RE7 at some point. It seems to go on sale for half off all the time.  I never played RE3, either. I think that one is on sale for $12 on Xbox. I need to get around to finishing the RE2 remake, as well.

[Bebpo]

Now that I'm done with 6 months of 100 hour games back to back (Elden Ring -> Xenoblade 3 -> Kuro no Kiseki II), I'm getting done lots of short stuff.

After clearing the RE8 DLC expansion, and the Xenoblade 3 DLC wave2, spent yesterday doing the DLC map for Hitman 3 Ambrose Island. 100%'d it out after about 6-8 hours.

It's a fun good Hitman map, but it's probably the weakest of the trilogy maps. The island compound location has been done before with Hitman 2's DLC The Resort, and that one was more fun with the civilian stuff you could do at the resort itself. This is mostly just some bases and a really empty village with almost nothing you can do.

Map seemed built more for player contracts and elusives and escalations. The main targets don't have a lot of ways to re-route them in interesting ways and there's very little story to them.

I mean they gave this away for free, so can't really complain and it's still a good B quality Hitman trilogy map. Was worth a play. Will check out the rogue mode they're adding in January and then I guess that's it for Hitman for a long while until after their Bond game.

[Joe Molotov]

[chronovore]

Gotham Knights. It’s a weird move to focus on fighting only, very limited stealth, no Challenge Rooms so far. Do they give you for players to use, it feels like they want you to grind on one character progression, because they don’t give the “heroic travel” method until a grindy milestone as achieved.

Controls feel a little bit clunky, like there is a delay.

However, Batcycle handles better than the Batmobile did.

It feels like the Batman voice in the intro and the Batman voice in the AR trainer are different. They got Kevin Conroy for part of it, I thought. But the AR trainer voice doesn’t sound right.

The game is beginning to click, and at the same time it feels a bit like Assassins Creed's "here are four things to do, hope you like 40 hours of this."

I've unlocked Fast Travel, and the "heroic" cape glide for Batgirl so, finally 8 hours in, the traversal feels less like a shitty Spider-Man web-swing.

Had a mission last night against Mr. Freeze, fought endless waves of baddies until I realized there was a serialized set of buttons to be pushed while brawling, explained in a microscopic text update to my mission brief, because reading my UI is what I want to do while brawling, I guess.

Feels like if I went back to finish Arkham Knight, I'd probably not come back to this game. Better finish it while I can.

[MMaRsu]

Now that I'm done with 6 months of 100 hour games back to back (Elden Ring -> Xenoblade 3 -> Kuro no Kiseki II), I'm getting done lots of short stuff.

After clearing the RE8 DLC expansion, and the Xenoblade 3 DLC wave2, spent yesterday doing the DLC map for Hitman 3 Ambrose Island. 100%'d it out after about 6-8 hours.

It's a fun good Hitman map, but it's probably the weakest of the trilogy maps. The island compound location has been done before with Hitman 2's DLC The Resort, and that one was more fun with the civilian stuff you could do at the resort itself. This is mostly just some bases and a really empty village with almost nothing you can do.

Map seemed built more for player contracts and elusives and escalations. The main targets don't have a lot of ways to re-route them in interesting ways and there's very little story to them.

I mean they gave this away for free, so can't really complain and it's still a good B quality Hitman trilogy map. Was worth a play. Will check out the rogue mode they're adding in January and then I guess that's it for Hitman for a long while until after their Bond game.

Ohh right they are doing a bond game that might be amazing

[bork]

Gotham Knights. It’s a weird move to focus on fighting only, very limited stealth, no Challenge Rooms so far. Do they give you for players to use, it feels like they want you to grind on one character progression, because they don’t give the “heroic travel” method until a grindy milestone as achieved.

Controls feel a little bit clunky, like there is a delay.

However, Batcycle handles better than the Batmobile did.

It feels like the Batman voice in the intro and the Batman voice in the AR trainer are different. They got Kevin Conroy for part of it, I thought. But the AR trainer voice doesn’t sound right.

The game is beginning to click, and at the same time it feels a bit like Assassins Creed's "here are four things to do, hope you like 40 hours of this."

I've unlocked Fast Travel, and the "heroic" cape glide for Batgirl so, finally 8 hours in, the traversal feels less like a shitty Spider-Man web-swing.

Had a mission last night against Mr. Freeze, fought endless waves of baddies until I realized there was a serialized set of buttons to be pushed while brawling, explained in a microscopic text update to my mission brief, because reading my UI is what I want to do while brawling, I guess.

Feels like if I went back to finish Arkham Knight, I'd probably not come back to this game. Better finish it while I can.

I put this on hold to play Bayonetta 3- probably going to feel strange going back to it after that, but hopefully some more fixes will come out before then.

[Joe Molotov]

Zin going full MAGA. 


Gilbert is one of the all-time great joke villains

[Pissy F Benny]

Zintex

[BIONIC]

Zwartex

[MMaRsu]

He's not wrong

[Hamarr]

I finished Prey and did two of the different endings.  Not sure why I do this with games I love, but I start them up then decide to "savor" them by not playing them for years.  I might try out Moon Crash. Not sure yet. So far, Death Loop is the other Arkane game that hasn't clicked for me. Their game design is usually right up my alley. I did leave a bunch of side missions incomplete. Something seemed to bug out with the recordings, so there was a pile of them that started playing when there were only a few hours left, and the station was in lockdown.  The side missions didn't seem to be particularly rewarding either, other than making moral choices. 

I also played a bit of RE4 on the Xbox Series X. I've bought this game on almost every system going back to the GC. It's still good, but the controls feel so clunky now.  Leon quit running a bunch when I was holding down the A button. 

[Bebpo]

After a break got back to my Monkey Island series replay and finished up the back half of Curse of Monkey Island.

Blood Island where I left off was great. It's the one section of the game that feels as good as the previous games (and Return to MI). Good puzzles, story stuff, humor. It's a bit short is all. Then the ending stuff at the Carnival/Rollercoaster is pretty weak.

The game is alright. Obviously the art/VA is fantastic, but the starting island I thought was just ok, the ship combat section sucked, blood island was great and the endgame sucked. When I first jumped into MI3 after finishing MI2 I was like "this is not Guybrush, Guybrush is a dick and this guy is PG nice and boring", but after a month break coming back to it I thought Guybrush in MI3 was fine. If you're not directly comparing him to MI1/2 Guybrush he's fine and MI3 is fine as a soft reboot. I just wish it was a stronger adventure game. It's nice looking and gameplay-wise and writing-wise decent but that's about.

At some point will either play or watch a playthrough of Escape from Monkey Island since it's known to be bad and is a pain to get working right on modern rigs.

[Bebpo]

Played through Mojiken's When the Past was Around. It's a cute mix of a hidden object game and puzzle game that is somewhat similar to Florence which I also really liked.

My only complaint besides maybe being a little too passcode based for puzzles, is that it doesn't save every screen but every chapter and there's no in-game way of telling when you're in a new chapter so if you do this in multiple sittings you might keep coming back and having to start a few screens behind which was a bit annoying.

Otherwise absolutely A++ artwork, some nice music, and a couple hours of cute owl and cute girl story. Worth a few bucks for emotional hipsters.

[demi]

Waiting for GameFly to send BHM of War: Thor Edition, so playing random games

Ghosthunter (PS2)

I thought this would be kinda resident evil-y, but nope it's a mid as fuck game. Meh

Eternal Darkness (GCN)

This game holds up pretty well. Story is still unique, love the sanity effects. Gameplay is kinda eh, but serviceable.

BMX XXX (GCN)

Just wanted to see the extent of the tits. Yes, you can have your female characters have their tits out. I used a code to unlock all the bonus movies... I saw maybe one titty. Meh. Lots of funny toilet humor though.

Viewtiful Joe (GCN)

This game is difficult, the controls arent the smoothest (the one thing holding this game back), but I enjoy the style of this game.

[tiesto]

Beat Shredder's Revenge story mode on Normal last nite. With who else but my childhood cartoon crush, April. Was surprised that Ghostface and Raekwon turned up in the soundtrack for the Shredder fight.

[Nintex]

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered
This game is still awesome many years later. Unlocks drop quickly, the Pursuits are intense and the sense of speed is great.
Banging soundtrack too.

I'm hoping EA will remaster more Need for Speeds down the line.

[demi]

My Gamecube is getting disc read errors SADGE

Seems to be an eventual result for these things at this age. I'm not smart enough to solder new capacitors on it, so I need to find someone to come fuck my wife and do it too

Guess it's Wii time

[Bebpo]

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered
This game is still awesome many years later. Unlocks drop quickly, the Pursuits are intense and the sense of speed is great.
Banging soundtrack too.

I'm hoping EA will remaster more Need for Speeds down the line.

It's weird how like at the time it felt good but a step down for a Criterion game, but in retrospect it's so much better than everything they've put out since that it holds up really well.

Criterion really had one of the biggest falling aparts (mostly due to EA and not their fault). They were so freaking good during the Burnout/Black era which ended with Hot Pursuit.

[Bebpo]

Been playing Signalis since it's free in the humble app if you're a subscriber. It's quite good so far and the reviews are great.

One of the few games that really hits that RE1 style PS1 fixed camera survival horror gameplay feel. Like it doesn't feel like some indie imitator, but actually like a good PS1 survival horror game. Gameplay feels like RE1, story/atmosphere-wise feels like Dead Space w/some anime.

Inventory space is a bit too small so I'm constantly running back to the item box and the first time I used the lockpick mechanism it was so unintuitive I had to look it up after like 15 mins of getting nowhere. But otherwise it's really good so far.

[paprikastaude]

My Gamecube is getting disc read errors SADGE

Seems to be an eventual result for these things at this age. I'm not smart enough to solder new capacitors on it, so I need to find someone to come fuck my wife and do it too

Guess it's Wii time

Last year my GCN still had a few GBA Player runs in it, but died soon after. Only thing that sucks about the Wii is that you need to start GCN with the Wiimote...

[Nintex]

I didn't know GameCubes could actually die 

[demi]

If you want to use a disc, the disc ready will eventually fart away due to capacitors. Alternatively you just buy something like SD2SP2 or do PicoBoot and run everything off SD Card

[Rahxephon91]

Star Ocean 6:The Divine Farce is actually pretty solid.

[Bebpo]

Star Ocean 6:The Divine Farce is actually pretty solid.

That's what I've been hearing. Sounds like a flawed, but good PS2-era jrpg with some modern stuff.

Demo was pretty fun. Will pick it up at $20.

[Nintex]

Unlocked 38 of the 78 racer events in Hot Pursuit. The pursuits are really awesome once you get further into the game.
Doesn't seem like many people played it or I'm just really good because I keep getting rare achievements, such as doing a Turbo without hitting anything.
The Turbo in this game is crazy like literally turning your car into a rocket ship but the traffic density is low so it's not that hard to do a clean Turbo.

Also played Tunic again. Took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do next because I hadn't played it in a while.
Made some decent progress. It's a fun and great looking game, stellar soundtrack too. But the difficulty is all over the place. Currently I'm having trouble to beat rats(?) with snipers.
These fuckers can do one shot kills even before you can actually see them and the targetting in this game always targets the wrong enemy. Save points are also too scattered for my liking.
The area I'm in now reminds me a bit of Metroid Prime 2 actually. The environment slowly drains your health and save points still require you to re-do a lot of stuff.

[Joe Molotov]

I beat Trails in the Sky the 3rd. Great game, not as good as Second Chapter tho. The main plot just felt like a contrivance to assemble all the characters together for no real reason, but it did get better as it went on and ended with some real emotional heft. I liked Kevin's character arc, although Rie never really advanced much beyond "I-It's not like a I like you or anything, baka-san!!!" The side-stories were mostly really good, the fishing minigame can diaf. Agate needs to be in prison. 8/10



"See you in Kuro no Kiseki, space cowboys!"

[Bebpo]

You did all the doors, right?

The doors are the real plot of The 3rd. It's a collection of mini-stories that give epilogues or build up towards the later games in the series. Some are really important, so hopefully you watched all the doors including the final one. If not, youtube any you missed.

The main plot is solid, it's mostly because Kevin didn't get much character development in Sky SC so they use The Third to fill that in. It's good for introducing some of the hell/heaven stuff of the Trails world lore and a bit of the church organization.

It also has a really good soundtrack.

[Joe Molotov]

Yeah, I did all the doors. They got me hyped to play Crossbell/Cold Steel.

[Bebpo]

Finished Signalis

Like a lot of great horror games the game has a handful of flaws/annoyances. But beyond that, the game does A LOT right and sits up with stuff like RE1-3/SH1-4 or even Dead Space, Amnesia, SOMA, etc... the atmosphere is A++, the puzzles are HARD but actually pretty fucking good and smarter than the genre. I'd say some of the puzzles in this are better than any of the puzzles in RE/SH. The combat is alright and you can stealth pretty damn well most of the time. Level design is good/great. I'd say the level design is below the best sections of RE/SH, but pretty much on par with the rest of RE/SH.

The story and notes are great, the visual polish and music is excellent. Good length. Multiple endings. I might do another run.

The craziest thing is this entire game was made by TWO people. This is a similar accomplishment to like Hollow Knight being made by three people. Signalis feels like a full team indie game with a $5-$10M budget. Not like...two people in Hamburg, Germany. It's crazy impressive. I hope they get a full team and like $20M by a good publisher for their next game because if Signalis had an AAA budget it'd easily stand along with stuff like Dead Space.

I'd say it's the best Survival Horror game in an almost decade since SOMA and one of the best indie games of the last five years. I think people will remember Signalis in a decade when listing top Survival Horror games like people do with Amensia/Soma today.

Now the game definitely has flaws. Item management is stingy even by RE1 standards, but the items boxes and save points are way more frequent. The combat has trouble when dealing with 2 active enemies at once as it has trouble targetting and you have to target before you can shoot. The combat is kind of too easy if you're a SH pro, there's a couple of unintuitive puzzles, an annoying section, one of the sub-items really shouldn't take up an inventory slot. One of the boss fights has terrible signposting for what you're supposed to do.

So basically it's a survival horror game and has annoying flaws but they also kinda add to the tension and it all just sort of works out by the end.

And it cribs a lot from Hideaki's End of Evangelion along with RE/SH/Dead Space, but it still feels pretty fresh and not too clone-ish.

It's free on Game Pass, it's free on the Humble App if you buy their monthly games. It has 97% positive score on Steam with 1,000+ reviews. If you like old-school item management survival horror, definitely play this. Will be top5 GoTY contender for sure for me this year.

My total stats:

[Polident Hive]

Really liked the demo and I’ll play it after Ghost Song. Also on gamepass and the humble thing. Speaking of,

Ghost Song is okay. Screens sold it as Metroid with a hand drawn art style. That’s not exactly inaccurate, but with buts. It looks good in screens, but animation is flash game ish. It’s Metroid, but lots of ideas borrowed from other games that ruin its simplicity. It had a strong atmosphere, but it translates as moving slower through the world.

Just unlocked running and its 1.2x the normal speed. And there’s a stamina bar getting drained. And the core loop has been backtracking. Literally. There’s a camp in the top middle of the map. Goal is to find an object South East and bring it back. You see there’s another object in the South West, maybe you can collect both in one trip. Doesn’t work that way. Can only carry one object. Fast travel is disabled.

Combat makes sense on paper. In practice you’re managing three gauges. Shooting the blaster quickly gets slower and weaker as it overheats. Overheating your blaster makes melee stronger, but melee rapidly drains stamina. Special weapons slowly refills. It’s made annoying with enemies being damage sponges.

Anyway, this is a tangent. Some of the best modern Metroid/Castlevania games are from Team Ladybug. Last night I was looking into them and the main person went though various names dating back to 2003. As Driven Phantom Soft, they made a SOTN clone called Return to Egypt. Where as Moses, you return to Egypt and fight monsters and gods. In the 2010s (or earlier) they became Krobon Station. Pharaoh Rebirth was the first game sold outside Japan. Before/after/during it became Team Ladybug, they made a free SMT SOTN clone with Jack Frost. And a Mega Man clone as an anime dvd pack in, something called konosuba? Touhou Luna Nights and Lodoss War were awesome and I want to track down their older games.

[tiesto]

You did all the doors, right?

The doors are the real plot of The 3rd. It's a collection of mini-stories that give epilogues or build up towards the later games in the series. Some are really important, so hopefully you watched all the doors including the final one. If not, youtube any you missed.

The main plot is solid, it's mostly because Kevin didn't get much character development in Sky SC so they use The Third to fill that in. It's good for introducing some of the hell/heaven stuff of the Trails world lore and a bit of the church organization.

It also has a really good soundtrack.

One of the best tunes in the series:

[Joe Molotov]

I played a little Signalis last night on Gamepass. In the first area you have climb down a flesh tunnel, where you find a copy of The King in Yellow and then the screen glitches out and melts your face off while a quote from the Necronomicon flashes across the screen. Seems like a me game.

Also played through the prologue of Cold Steel 1 on the Vita. I'd played around 25 hours into it a decade ago, so I figured I might as well restart at this point. Coming straight in from Skies, right now I'll say Pros: You can break pots, Cons: No more chest flavor text. 

[Svejk]

Never even heard of Signalis till y'all pointed it out.  Seems straight fire.

[tiesto]

I played a little Signalis last night on Gamepass. In the first area you have climb down a flesh tunnel, where you find a copy of The King in Yellow and then the screen glitches out and melts your face off while a quote from the Necronomicon flashes across the screen. Seems like a me game.

Also played through the prologue of Cold Steel 1 on the Vita. I'd played around 25 hours into it a decade ago, so I figured I might as well restart at this point. Coming straight in from Skies, right now I'll say Pros: You can break pots, Cons: No more chest flavor text. 

You're not going to Zero first?
Zero (and probably Azure) have the treasure chest text, but the CS games don't.

[thetylerrob]

You are blowing through these Trails games so damn fast. I finished up Sky The Third a few days before you and I'm maybe 25% through Zero now. I know you'll finish the series way before me lol.

[Joe Molotov]

I haven't done Zero yet, but I may go back to it before Cold Steel though because I just think the 2D Trails games are neat. In 3D, there's just a lot of empty space and it takes longer to get around and do things. Also the load times for CS1 on the Vita are kind ugh, I'm thinking about just rebuying it on Steam lol.

[Bebpo]

I haven't done Zero yet, but I may go back to it before Cold Steel though because I just think the 2D Trails games are neat. In 3D, there's just a lot of empty space and it takes longer to get around and do things. Also the load times for CS1 on the Vita are kind ugh, I'm thinking about just rebuying it on Steam lol.

Yeaaaaah, please play it on steam. CS games run like shit on PS3, let alone Vita. You don't have to suffer like I did!

And yeah, play Zero/Ao before CS now that Zero/Ao are actually available in English. Plus Zero/Ao build off of Sky trilogy by getting better and better which is good before the crashing down that is CS.

[demi]

CS has been ported to PS4,PS5,PS6 at this point

[Joe Molotov]

Key resellers had it for $10. I've bought it enough times before already to not feel bad.

[Bebpo]

God of War Ragnorak is reminding me that I really did not like GoW 2018.

I'm pretty disappointed that this game is pretty much the same old thing early on. It's fine if you liked GoW 2018, but I thought it was like a 7/10 game that was pretty boring and repetitive.

I hate how little environmental interaction there is. It's like here's all this landscape but most of it is just for the art because you can't even jump a step unless it has a special marking. GoW 2018's design reminds me of FF13. Just a bunch of invisible wall corridors.

And the "side stuff" that I hated in GoW 2018 was how these on-rails corridors were only interrupted with little repetitive islands that had the same 3-4 types of puzzles over and over again to get small rewards that don't matter much.

Ragnorak so far is the same thing. It feels like a game I am barely actually "playing" and instead am just walking down a scripted corridor with minimal interaction that separates fight after fight against waves of enemies. Whenever I get to "explore" it's just going to repetitive areas with the same dull puzzles that were in 2018. Also your kid won't stfu and constantly spoils the solution to every puzzle so not only is there no actual gameplay for exploration, but there's almost no gameplay for puzzles.

Basically there's just the combat, which is solid, the boss fights and set pieces which are cool, and the story which is fine, but otherwise Ragnorak feels just as boring to play as 2018 so far. I really prefer the old GoW games in level design and structure. The semi-open-world of the new GoW mixed with complete lack of interaction with the world just feels really hollow. I mean, come on, give me a fucking jump button.

As much as I didn't like Horizon 2, at least that let you actually walk around the gorgeous environment. I really don't like the FF13ness of this GoW. I don't like games where I don't actually feel like I'm playing.

[Bebpo]

Reading impressions from people who've finish Ragnorak, it sounds disappointing in that it's more of the same, with some good stuff, some dragging stuff, instead of like a majorly improved sequel.

I wonder if this got rebooted in development. Four years is a pretty long time to make a sequel sticking to a formula and engine from the previous game and not changing up much. It's not even like it was a PS5 game and the extra dev time was on the new visuals.

I wonder if it was a ps5 game but when cross-gen got extended because of supply issues, that they had to retool the game for ps4 or something which added an extra year delay on top of covid delays.


But yeah, people seem not blown away by this or Bayonetta 3. Seems like no major AAA game blowing people away this fall. Elden Ring probably the only AAA game to do that in 2022. Hope some of the 2023 AAA stuff like FF16 and Alan Wake 2 are stronger releases.

[Svejk]

Although I enjoyed the gameplay in GOW 2018, the story was poorly written imo.  I can already tell the narrative of GOWR is much worse.  Not paying full price for basically some tweaks in the gameplay.

[Joe Molotov]

Restarted CS1 on the Steam Deck, and it just feels a lot better. Vita had 5+ second load times between entering/leaving combat, PC version has almost none. PC version also has the return of the Turbo Button (which I used a lot in SC/3rd to blaze through combat). Going from that to the Vita version just made combat feel slow as molasses, it was crashing my Trails high. But now I'm thinking I'm back. Plus it just looks nicer. Anyway, I played through the Prologue and most of Chapter 1 last night.

Right now, my plan is CS1 -> CS2 -> Zero -> Azure -> CS3 -> CS4 -> Reverie, we'll see if I burn out before then.

Glorious Nippon Steel





When hers is bigger, tho

[Bebpo]

Although I enjoyed the gameplay in GOW 2018, the story was poorly written imo.  I can already tell the narrative of GOWR is much worse.  Not paying full price for basically some tweaks in the gameplay.

Fwiw, people seem to think the writing is a lot better here. Like to the point where it's the biggest step up and biggest selling point of Ragnorak. Though if the biggest change in your God of War game from the previous game is better writing....

Writing seems fine where I'm in other than the kid never shutting up. I don't remember 2018 being as goofy as this. This one is continually making fun of Kratos. Kratos does not need snacks. I'm fine with that but tonally I don't know if that fits within the game's narrative since 2018 felt so serious.

[HardcoreRetro]

The writing in this one feels like they made God of War: The Disney+ Series.

[Potato]

Started playing a game called Among Trees. It's a laid back survival/exploration game with minimal danger and collection/crafting elements. Played an hour or so yesterday and it was nice and relaxing.

If there's more to it than just wandering around collecting stuff to make more stuff to wander further around then this will be the game I've been searching a long time for. I'm hoping there's a bit of environmental storytelling and some cool mysteries/secrets to be discovered in the world.

[chronovore]

Started playing a game called Among Trees. It's a laid back survival/exploration game with minimal danger and collection/crafting elements. Played an hour or so yesterday and it was nice and relaxing.

If there's more to it than just wandering around collecting stuff to make more stuff to wander further around then this will be the game I've been searching a long time for. I'm hoping there's a bit of environmental storytelling and some cool mysteries/secrets to be discovered in the world.

That is kinda what Valheim gave me. There wasn't much danger until the first boss.

[Bebpo]

Started playing a game called Among Trees. It's a laid back survival/exploration game with minimal danger and collection/crafting elements. Played an hour or so yesterday and it was nice and relaxing.

If there's more to it than just wandering around collecting stuff to make more stuff to wander further around then this will be the game I've been searching a long time for. I'm hoping there's a bit of environmental storytelling and some cool mysteries/secrets to be discovered in the world.

Never heard of it, but looked it up and the art is pretty nice.

[Boredfrom]

Tried to play Homefront The Revolution because I bought for 2 dollars.

Janky urban Far Cry without the power fantasy. Ugh.

[Bebpo]

I've been playing UnMetal a bit every night or two in bed on the Steam Deck. Was in the latest Humble Choice bundle and is a Metal Gear 1/2 parody clone.



Now that I'm about halfway through at 4ish hours (game is 10 hours+), I'm getting close to dropping it. The game is indie retro gaming difficult, but it's difficult because it constantly has difficulty spikes out of nowhere for the lulz and some of the challenges it makes you do are annoyingly hard.

I've been putting up with it and might've put up with it for the whole thing because otherwise it's a pretty good old-school (pre-MGS) Metal Gear game, but the writing and cutscenes are yikes. Like the cutscenes parody Kojima I guess having long conversations (voiced and can't skip lines ahead) all the fucking time with bad writing and bad VA, but the humor which is like a 1 out of every 10 jokes lands kind of thing is almost bearable

...until they start introducing female characters into the game. Then the toilet level parody writing starts getting really annoyingly sexist and because the writing quality is so bad it's tough to tell whether this is a clever parody of Solid Snake being a horndog or it's actually just being written by 13 year old boys who are like HOT CHICK, FUCK YEAHHH, IS THAT A BONER IN MY PANTS??

So yeah, at this point the writing is just absolutely awful and the gameplay is sorta pretty good indie throwback MGS but littered with difficulty spikes and lots of troll game overs. It's really not the "chill in bed and play on Steam Deck" kind of game now.

Professional reviews for this were generally in the 8s and basically said, good game with lots of stupid difficulty spikes and bad writing with occasionally funny jokes.

https://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/switch-eshop/unmetal

Also one of the top positive steam reviews:

As much as I want to leave a negative review due to own personal frustrations (terrible challenge/achievements system, jokes that drag on for way too long, cutscenes at every step) I can't deny that there's a decent stealth game here.

It's a good parody game, but you must be into this sort of old fashioned humor otherwise you'll find yourself skipping through the story bits. Tho, tbh you won't be missing out on much.

Pick this up if you liked the original Metal Gear, this is a good homage to that game even if it doesn't take itself seriously.

Also this kind of game would probably work better if it was like your usual indie game that's like 4-5 hours long of this. At 10 hours+...that's asking a lot. So yeah, may drop it soon.

[bork]

I like how in the beginning of UnMetal, there's a cut scene you trigger by punching crates where they're interrogating the main character and there's a conversation on why the hell he's punching shit like that.

[Bebpo]

I like how in the beginning of UnMetal, there's a cut scene you trigger by punching crates where they're interrogating the main character and there's a conversation on why the hell he's punching shit like that.

Yeah, when that happened I was like "this game is genius!"
And there's a handful of other jokes that land and are really funny. I just feel like a lot of the jokes are...bad.

There's a gag that happens around ch.3 that I'm hoping is taken even further, but I don't know if they are clever enough to be aware of the joke possibility:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

There's a transition in ch.3 when he's telling his flashback story of the game itself to the general and then it transitions to that he's actually telling a flashback of telling the general the flashback of the story of the game, to his girlfriend on a drive.

I want the game to like cut to something later where he's telling a flashback to someone else about telling a flashback to his gf about telling a flashback to the general about a flashback of his experience in the game.

[close]

[Pissy F Benny]

Been playing a lot of PS2 shit lately via emulation and having a rootin tootin good time for the most part. Until I have to save a game, god I forgot how tedious and slow it was back then for the most part

[paprikastaude]

Although I enjoyed the gameplay in GOW 2018, the story was poorly written imo.  I can already tell the narrative of GOWR is much worse.  Not paying full price for basically some tweaks in the gameplay.

This is the problem. I mean, this series started out as a Devil May Cry clone. It was never more than constant battling, with awesome backdrops, plus a few puzzles to cool down inbetween. And Nu GoW is still the best when they let me fight and do some dumb puzzles. Yet when GoW18 wouldn't shut up at times with its braindead story sequences, I literally screamed at the screen. Ragnarok might be a little better? It's still cringe and Atreus is a terrible protag, but overall I might hate the story a bit less? Maybe because some other new characters are now a little less terrible.

Still, the only OTS cinema corridor game which I felt had good writing that chimed well with the actual game design remains Hellblade.

[paprikastaude]

Speaking of which. Recently I played GoW3 for the first time. I know some hardcore action nerds always shat on the original games in comparison with DMC and Ninja Gaiden, but fuck that, they are super fun character action. GoW was not as deep as the games it cloned, but combat feels great and the level design has good pacing. The fixed camera angles are some of the best since REmake. I can see why both Kamiya and Itagaki were stanning for the series, even if their games were still better.

At first I wanted to say that its edginess is a little too embarrassing. But at least old GoW is honest. Bringing hamfisted morals into shooting/hack'n'slay games falls flat more often than not, i.e. ludonarrative dissonance. Something like old GoW is the complete opposite, because being an asshole war criminal actually fits this kind of game design. 

[Svejk]

Horizon FW – Made some progress up to when accessing Gaia.  Seems weird how the weapon progression is in this game.  Feels like I have nothing appropriate for most enemies, other than brute forcing pieces off….which is fine.  I guess they want players to explore more to cater to certain weapons.  Other than that, I haven’t had any trouble with certain enemies.  If I ventured off and was getting 1 hit deaths, I just went somewhere else.  I will say I’m starting to enjoy it a bit more though.

Mass Effect: LE – Finished ME1 last night.  It was pretty good, having never played it.  Jumping immediately into ME2, it was actually a bit of a significant leap on what they improved off the bat.  It’s been over 10 years since I played it on PS3, so some of it is familiar, but it looks and plays great.  Already a smoother gameplay experience than ME1.  Looking forward to playing through this one again.  Old school Bioware just did it right somehow.
 
Zelda: LTTP - Made it to the Dark World.  It's pretty cool how this game did certain things that were re-done in other Zeldas since, like the hitting the boss projectile back at them.  Also the Dark World toggle opening up caves and such that don't appear in the regular world.  I hope to actually finish playing through this finally after so many years.  For some reason, had zero interest in it back then.  A friend of mine had an SNES, but never got it and we never cared to rent it or anything.  Better late then never I suppose.

[Bebpo]

Been playing a lot of PS2 shit lately via emulation and having a rootin tootin good time for the most part. Until I have to save a game, god I forgot how tedious and slow it was back then for the most part

If you're on an emulator can't you just use save states tho?

[Joe Molotov]

Beat Chapter 2 of Trails of Cold Steel. I love the buttrock boss battle music.



me, when the violins hit



hmm....

[Nintex]

Moar Hot Pursuit. It's funny I keep reading about Sony channeling Hollywood with their games but I feel like EA always did it much better.
When I'm speeding on a highway with an Aston Martin One 77 taking out cops with Turbo's and shooting at choppers with EMP blasts it legit feels like a James Bond movie.
With about 20 events to go I got some of the best cars now and damn this game is fast at ~220 mph.

Also every UK developer creating a mix tape for their racing game (another lost art tbh)