SHEAKENBAKEN wrote: ↑Thu Apr 27, 2023 10:29 pm
Looking forward to playing Jedi: Survivor when I get back home from my current vacation trip back to my hometown!
Realized yesterday that its PS5/XSERIESX exclusive ...Do I want to spend over $700 for a PS5 for my birthday
From what I’ve heard you’ll probably want to wait for a few patches anyways. I played the first game but haven’t gotten around to the second one yet. From what I’ve read online it’s a few patches away from having the bugs worked out of it.
I liked the first one but it also wasn’t good enough to warrant paying full price for the sequel. Given the state of the game at launch, it’ll probably be be on a decent sale around the holidays.
Almost as if it wasn't ready for release. Gotta love the video games industry
It’s getting a lot more common. I think the era of competition is so stiff that investors mostly put the pressure on the studios because they want to see a return on their investment sooner rather than later. The quicker they can cash out on one game, the quicker they can move onto the next.
I usually just wait for about 6 months until they’ve worked everything out and the price drops lol
I've gone on quite the gaming binge in the last 15 months after taking it easy for a few years due to having young kids.
Elden Ring, Dark Souls remaster and Dark Souls 2, Metroid Dread, every major Resident Evil game (including Revelations and the old versions of 2 and 3, but not the remake of 4 yet), the Last of Us Part's 1 and 2, Deathloop, Dishonored, Dishonored 2, Fear and Returnal.
Most of those are old or very well known. Of those which aren't...
Deathloop: certainly Arkane Studios (Dishonored) is well known but I think this game didn't catch on the way their flagship series did. This game definitely borrows from Dishonored a bit, but spices things up with lots of guns and a crazy time-travel loop which permeates and affects the story and gameplay.
Returnal is a surprisingly good game that annoyed me a little at times, but when I was done with it I was kind of sad to be moving on. It's another game with a time loop theme, but it's less about exploring and stealth and more about hair-rippingly difficult combat (at least for my action gaming skills). There were several occasions where I killed some boss with a tiny sliver of health left certain I was dead meat. I can only take so much of that. The best thing is that virtually all attacks in the game are projectiles, so it's about reflexes and dodging (like old-school Doom) not about cowering behind cover (Gears of War; etc.). I only wish the story had turned out a little less ambiguous.
I also have a thing for minimalist rogue-like single player card games and have played a handful relatively recently which warrant mini reviews. Not sure if anyone else here cares about this genre.
Slay the Spire: the original rogue like, deck-building single-player card game. It's you and some cards vs. 50 floors which are a mix of monsters, boss fights, small events and other opportunities to increase (or accidentally decrease) your power. After years of development and community feedback, the game is no longer being updated because it's basically perfect. My only complaint is that the 4th character, added late, is a little unbalanced and frankly not as much fun to play. The high point of the game aside from its balance and minimalist story that lets you focus on the gameplay, is the difficulty scaling. You start at level 0 and once you learn the basics of the game, you're invited to slowly turn up the heat to a maximum of 20 with each level providing a handicap such as fewer potion slots. There are still Twitch channels with people playing this 4yo game daily where the best streams are getting 1000's of views per stream and making a living off it. It's available on virtually every platform at this point including mobile phones.
Monster Train: basically like spire (with 25 levels of difficulty scaling) but where you field a team of monsters fighting on 3 floors of a train to defend it on its journey to relight the fires of hell (you play as demons against angels). A solid game if you've worn out Spire and want to try something different.
Inscryption: this one is a little different. It ends up being spire-like as well, but not before you play through an extended campaign which is a strange mix of horror elements, escape room, card playing and other unexpected story twists. I don't normally tolerate silly stories getting in the way of actual game playing, but this one is well worth playing if only for the creativity involved. Ultimately I wish the difficulty was higher and also more balanced. The post-game content gets a lot tougher, but you end up winning through broken combos fairly easily and the method of play (start with 4 or so cards and draw a single card per turn) feels relatively limiting in the end.
Ring of Pain: a fun little game with a very different kind of mechanic. Instead of playing cards, you play *against* cards which form a ring on the playing field. You work your way through monsters and other obstacles to gear and other treasures or to the door leading to the next ring. It's more obscure and relatively brief, but definitely worth a play if you like this sort of game.
Ok, that's enough information dump for one morning.
Crumbso wrote: ↑Thu Sep 15, 2022 10:21 am
I've been playing Hades. What a fantastic game. Great gameplay, awesome art direction, endless replayability, interesting story and brilliant soundtrack. Well worth the 20 quid I paid.
Finally got round to this, awesome game! Took me embarrassingly long to get to grips with certain bosses but finally got to the end of the story (and the excellent credits song!) 100+ runs deep (Hypnos made sure to emphasise this)
As a huge Soulsborne fan it took me ages to finish Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice after playing it on and off for several months, but I recently defeated the final boss on that one.
I enjoy playing their games that have multiple character build options so being more limited to just using a katana was different. Never felt like I fully got the hang of the combat on this one but I guess I did well enough to finish it lol
Andy92 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 7:56 pm
As a huge Soulsborne fan it took me ages to finish Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice after playing it on and off for several months, but I recently defeated the final boss on that one.
I enjoy playing their games that have multiple character build options so being more limited to just using a katana was different. Never felt like I fully got the hang of the combat on this one but I guess I did well enough to finish it lol
Well done there. That final boss had me stuck for ages.
Sekiro was the game that finally enabled me to get into FromSoftware games. I bounced off of Dark Souls 3 pretty darn hard because there were so many options, unexplained stats and branching paths that I just ended confused as I got killed so many times.
Sekiro really focused all the systems and simplified everything so that the difficulty was just in learning the timing and enemy moveset. I ended up loving the world and atmosphere so much that it made me interested enough to go back to Dark Souls 3 and really take the time to explore everything properly.
Now I'm a pretty diehard fan.... though Elden Ring has taken me back to feeling totally lost and confused again
Crumbso wrote: ↑Wed Feb 14, 2024 6:13 am
Well done there. That final boss had me stuck for ages.
Sekiro was the game that finally enabled me to get into FromSoftware games. I bounced off of Dark Souls 3 pretty darn hard because there were so many options, unexplained stats and branching paths that I just ended confused as I got killed so many times.
Sekiro really focused all the systems and simplified everything so that the difficulty was just in learning the timing and enemy moveset. I ended up loving the world and atmosphere so much that it made me interested enough to go back to Dark Souls 3 and really take the time to explore everything properly.
Now I'm a pretty diehard fan.... though Elden Ring has taken me back to feeling totally lost and confused again
I started with Dark Souls 3 first around 2017-ish if I recall. The different ways to level your character confused me at first too. Had a friend who had played through the game already and explained the difference between leveling different stats to focus on different builds, and once I got the hang of that system I loved it. I have 200+ hours on Elden Ring on 3 play throughs because I fell in love with the build diversity it offers. No kidding that you end up with a lot of choice paralysis when playing it at first though.
I’ve done one play through each of Dark Souls 1, Demon’s Souls, and Bloodborne. Only one I’ve never played through is Dark Souls 2. I own it but the outdated gameplay turns me off of it. I only played Dark Souls 1 and Demon’s Souls due to the remasters.
I think Sekiro took me a long time because I’m used to being able to tweak my build a lot more to defeat a boss than that game offers. You end up getting slapped with “git gud” being your only solution at some point lol
If you like Sekiro you’d probably enjoy Lies of P if you haven’t tried that one. I actually beat that game relatively quickly despite it being full of parry mechanics like Sekiro. I think the parry window in that game is slightly friendlier, but it’s still pretty difficult.
Andy92 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 14, 2024 9:34 pm
I started with Dark Souls 3 first around 2017-ish if I recall. The different ways to level your character confused me at first too. Had a friend who had played through the game already and explained the difference between leveling different stats to focus on different builds, and once I got the hang of that system I loved it. I have 200+ hours on Elden Ring on 3 play throughs because I fell in love with the build diversity it offers. No kidding that you end up with a lot of choice paralysis when playing it at first though.
I’ve done one play through each of Dark Souls 1, Demon’s Souls, and Bloodborne. Only one I’ve never played through is Dark Souls 2. I own it but the outdated gameplay turns me off of it. I only played Dark Souls 1 and Demon’s Souls due to the remasters.
I think Sekiro took me a long time because I’m used to being able to tweak my build a lot more to defeat a boss than that game offers. You end up getting slapped with “git gud” being your only solution at some point lol
If you like Sekiro you’d probably enjoy Lies of P if you haven’t tried that one. I actually beat that game relatively quickly despite it being full of parry mechanics like Sekiro. I think the parry window in that game is slightly friendlier, but it’s still pretty difficult.
Yeah, I've gone through Lies of P twice now. The gameplay is fantastic but it doesn't have quite the same atmosphere of the From Software stuff. It's got a similar git gud approach to Sekiro but isn't quite as insanely demanding.
I'm slowly getting into the groove with Elden Ring. I'm in Liurnia at the moment and trying to do a Int/Dex fighting mage kind of thing. I haven't found any truly awesome spells yet though.
I'd love to try Bloodbourne and the Demon's Souls remake but I'm on an Xbox so maybe I'll have to pick up a PlayStation at some point.
Crumbso wrote: ↑Thu Feb 15, 2024 8:06 am
Yeah, I've gone through Lies of P twice now. The gameplay is fantastic but it doesn't have quite the same atmosphere of the From Software stuff. It's got a similar git gud approach to Sekiro but isn't quite as insanely demanding.
I'm slowly getting into the groove with Elden Ring. I'm in Liurnia at the moment and trying to do a Int/Dex fighting mage kind of thing. I haven't found any truly awesome spells yet though.
I'd love to try Bloodbourne and the Demon's Souls remake but I'm on an Xbox so maybe I'll have to pick up a PlayStation at some point.
My first Elden Ring play through was also a mage. I used to do that all the time cause I viewed casting from a distance as easy mode lol, but to be honest a lot of the bosses on Elden Ring close the gap so fast that playing as a mage can be fairly difficult at times.
My favorite play through so far has been a strength/faith build. There are tons of cool faith based spells and buffs throughout the game, and a lot of the boss fights are manageable using a strength weapon to stagger them.
The builds that tend to overpower most bosses in that game are the bleed builds though. That stat scales off Arcane and blood loss tends to wreck most of the late game bosses.
All-in-all though I recommend just taking your sweet time on that game and exploring all it has to offer. The open world style is a big change for From Software, but Elden Ring is the game I go back to the most because I can just get lost in the world for hours.
SHEAKENBAKEN wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 11:19 pm
Finally caved in and bought a PS5 because I watched some gameplay for Helldivers 2.
Been playing Helldivers 2 pretty much exclusively since I bought it. 73 hours into the game and I got the platinum trophy last night and now I'm just focusing on unlocking everything left in the game I haven't got yet. And they haven't even released the first major content update of the game either
SHEAKENBAKEN wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 11:19 pm
Finally caved in and bought a PS5 because I watched some gameplay for Helldivers 2.
Been playing Helldivers 2 pretty much exclusively since I bought it. 73 hours into the game and I got the platinum trophy last night and now I'm just focusing on unlocking everything left in the game I haven't got yet. And they haven't even released the first major content update of the game either
You're making me feel better about my 45+ hours in it What's the platinum trophy?
SHEAKENBAKEN wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 11:19 pm
Finally caved in and bought a PS5 because I watched some gameplay for Helldivers 2.
Been playing Helldivers 2 pretty much exclusively since I bought it. 73 hours into the game and I got the platinum trophy last night and now I'm just focusing on unlocking everything left in the game I haven't got yet. And they haven't even released the first major content update of the game either
You're making me feel better about my 45+ hours in it What's the platinum trophy?
It's just what you get for unlocking every other trophy in the game. It's a freebee.
The Epitome of Super Earth - Obtain all trophies of HELLDIVERS 2.
I'm now at 86 hours and just reached rank 50/max rank.
Also, whats your friend code so I can add you and we can play sometime maybe
SHEAKENBAKEN wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2024 8:41 pm
It's just what you get for unlocking every other trophy in the game. It's a freebee.
The Epitome of Super Earth - Obtain all trophies of HELLDIVERS 2.
I'm now at 86 hours and just reached rank 50/max rank.
Also, whats your friend code so I can add you and we can play sometime maybe
What level are you playing at? I don't think I've gone above the 4th or 5th tier.
Not sure what my friend code is, I'll write it down next time I'm in though!
Right now I usually play at Suicide Mission, Impossible, or Helldivers. So tiers 7, 8, and 9. Gotta get those samples for my ship upgrades, baby
I have one IRL friend that I try to play with most of the time when we can and if not him then I just play with randoms. But it'd be nice to be able to get a regular squad going! I also use the official discord LFG channel sometimes although that is proving to be hard to get people on the same page. Everyone usually just wants to ask people to join their thing instead of actually helping/joining others
But there's just something about the gameplay loop and the satirical elements to the lore that makes it so fun to play even in its early stages of the games life. Couldn't be having any more fun doing my part and saving Super Earth from bugs and robots with friends for Managed Democracy!
And it's kind of ironic that a couple months ago I was complaining to some discord friends that I needed a game to play like Gears and Halo where you're just some soldier shooting cool and fun and enemies and then Helldivers 2 came out of nowhere and it is exactly the game I was asking for
The bugs and glitches in the game coupled with the games character ragdoll/vehicle physics and friendly fire mechanic is also a highlight right now. The amount of times I have been shot hundreds of feet into the sky by either a glitchy Pelican at the LZ or a teammate meleeing me into something that makes me bug out or funny teamkills has made me laugh more than any game in recent memory.
SHEAKENBAKEN wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2024 8:41 pm
It's just what you get for unlocking every other trophy in the game. It's a freebee.
The Epitome of Super Earth - Obtain all trophies of HELLDIVERS 2.
I'm now at 86 hours and just reached rank 50/max rank.
Also, whats your friend code so I can add you and we can play sometime maybe
What level are you playing at? I don't think I've gone above the 4th or 5th tier.
Not sure what my friend code is, I'll write it down next time I'm in though!
Right now I usually play at Suicide Mission, Impossible, or Helldivers. So tiers 7, 8, and 9. Gotta get those samples for my ship upgrades, baby
I have one IRL friend that I try to play with most of the time when we can and if not him then I just play with randoms. But it'd be nice to be able to get a regular squad going! I also use the official discord LFG channel sometimes although that is proving to be hard to get people on the same page. Everyone usually just wants to ask people to join their thing instead of actually helping/joining others
But there's just something about the gameplay loop and the satirical elements to the lore that makes it so fun to play even in its early stages of the games life. Couldn't be having any more fun doing my part and saving Super Earth from bugs and robots with friends for Managed Democracy!
And it's kind of ironic that a couple months ago I was complaining to some discord friends that I needed a game to play like Gears and Halo where you're just some soldier shooting cool and fun and enemies and then Helldivers 2 came out of nowhere and it is exactly the game I was asking for
The bugs and glitches in the game coupled with the games character ragdoll/vehicle physics and friendly fire mechanic is also a highlight right now. The amount of times I have been shot hundreds of feet into the sky by either a glitchy Pelican at the LZ or a teammate meleeing me into something that makes me bug out or funny teamkills has made me laugh more than any game in recent memory.
...Do I want to spend over $700 for a PS5 for my birthday
