VideoGame_Discussion

benstylus wrote:

Sure, but with 'Split/Second,' if everyone is on the same skill level, it's the environmental triggers that are meant to shift advantage, but if you're too far back for one reason or another, those (and most shortcuts) won't make a difference. Basically, if you screw up or get screwed at the beginning of a race, there's no hope to being competitive.

I replayed through S/S last year and absolutely loved it and felt it held up extremely well. Really great game.

Ridge Racer 2 {} 8/10

I've always had mixed feelings on the Ridge Racer series overall. I've not played all of them and only consider myself a casual fan of the series, but of the ones I have played, some of the entries are good (OG Ridge Racer, Ridge Racer 3D), some are just average (Ridge Racer 64/RRDS) and some were pretty damn bad (Ridge Racer Unbounded).

This one definitely goes in the Good category.
Sometimes I'm just in the mood to play a good old fashioned arcade-style racer, unlocking better cars as I progress, and without having to worry about tinkering around under the hood to upgrade parts of my current car. The Ridge Racer games usually allow me to do just that, no upgrading nonsense, just pure racing. And the racing in this one is fun.

The game handles well too. I don't know how it controlled on the PSP but I never was a fan of that little nub anyway.

They did a decent job touching up the graphics on PS4/PS5. One issue I have though is the UI just takes up too much of the screen. Your only options are to deal with it, or turn it off completely with the select button. I would've liked a middle ground where I can at least see what place I'm in and how much nitro I have stored up, and turn off the rest.

NBA 2k15 remote play via Chiaki.

Coming off of NBA2K13…15 feels bad. My biggest complaint is I’ve noticed the comp nerfs my team when ever I play top rated teams like Lebron James’ cavaliers. All of a sudden no one can make a free throw or lay up. Lots of loose balls in 15 and shooting sucks. I think ima shelf this after this season. 6/10.

loztdogs wrote:

Steam Deck Chiaki or Windows app?

@Kommie I’ve used Steam Deck Chiaki but I happen to be playing on my Switch with the Hori split pads.

loztdogs wrote:

Do you get random white flashes or graphical glitches? No matter what settings I try, there's always some flash/green artifact or glitch.

Kommie wrote:

Never experienced that on either platform.

loztdogs wrote:

So I assume you never messed with any of the settings then? just installed it and played with no tinkering?

Been playing Dishonored 2. I really love this series. Still pretty early, finished chapter 3, but i’m fully engrossed

Kommie wrote:

Yup, fired it up out of the box. No tinkering.

loztdogs wrote:

They just keep getting worse every year after. 16 was decent if I remember correctly. But 17-22 is garbage. With each year becoming worse than the year before. I skipped this years because why bother at this point.

I bought NBA 2K22 after not playing it since 2K16 and I didn’t see the need to continue forward. It maybe played a little better, but they’re all basically the same and the micro transaction crap was just too much.

I've recently been looking at EA Basketball games on the Sega Genesis.

The nostalgia for Lakers vs Celtics and the NBA Playoffs is real

I hate all the new career nonsense in the newer games.

Recore Why am I suffering through this /10

Game's always sort of been on my radar since it was one of the very few exclusives from early on and then it came to GP so I've had it installed on my large external drive on my system for like 2+ years. Well M$ has a challenge to earn an Achievement for Women's month from some games with leading ladies and Recore was one, so on a whim I finally started it and sort of got sucked in b/c there are redeeming elements but it's also largely crap. First holy cow it is blown OUT with the colors/brightness/HDR. I started it on my OLED and XSX and took the brightness to as low as the game would allow and it was still so bright when you're out in the sands. But later on there's a dungeon in the dark and it was hard to see b/c of how dark it was. It's like they turned the HDR up to 11 or 14. Add in that it plays with colors a lot - the foes are largely in the 3 primary colors and you want to match that to deal more damage and visually this game actually gave me a headache in my last session.

I moved to playing on a smaller Hisense set where my X1X lives b/c the XSX wasn't popping achievements and that seems to be an 'issue' with the game. It's maybe worse with HDR on there, but that could be the TV, but I also just did a section that looks like 80's Tron and where you need to do some rubbish platforming and killing of enemies where the instant pull mechanic was in use a lot and that did some very bright screen flashes and it was very frustrating, so I'm sure that's where my headache came from... Then to top it off after wanting to tear my hear out I finally reached the end and went to the interface thingy and... instead of it being the multi-use thing, it teleported me to the beginning of the area... and I didn't unlock the fast travel point after that section, so I need to repeat it. If I didn't have a headache I think I would've smashed something - flarking HORRIBLE design choice - why the flying F would I want to go back to the beginning without it granting me the ability to return to where I suspect most folks will at least have some frustration in completing. So Stupid!

Game has some other issues like the camera, the lock-on being nearly useless (it switches very easily to a different enemy) and just too much going on at times, plus some other minor bugs. The version I'm playing has the DLC included that gives you another companion bot that's a mini tank you ride like a quad - it helps with traversing the large open sections of the map, which is nice, but then there are some chase activities you need to do to progress in the DLC's story and it does NOT control all that well for them.

I really should take a break from this especially since I now need to redo the last section that was frustrating trash. I oddly have a desire to beat this so I think I'll finish it, but it's not very good and I don't know why I'm punishing myself. I do like the story some and the lore.

I liked Recore but can understand why it’d feel like a chore. It just reminded me of having Mega Man elements with switching different weapons for enemy weaknesses. I can understand why it’s redundancy didn’t net it a sequel though.

@TalonJedi87 there's some good stuff in the game for sure - it's kept me playing and most of it I've enjoyed. But the annoying crap doesn't go away and especially in the tower 'climb', floor 2 can Suck it (not looking forward to having to replay that - and then a few more). 3D platforming when you're way up in the air (or there's just no ground below) and needing to advance like 50 feet and land on a 3' square platform in wide-open space with all sorts of obstacles wasn't great - especially when some of the designs felt pure BS or there was bad collision detection. Also the camera got too close to you at times in those sections. I liked that they added the orange circle under your feet so you could somewhat tell where you'd land, but the camera liked to be more behind you and not angled down enough to even show that circle. Also using the spider-bot to try to attach to those rails and the camera not showing that either was annoying.
I guess 75% of my gripes are around the camera and lock-on's weaknesses. Other 25% might be the blown out HDR or mixing, I like that it's not Gears of Grey but the sand areas are way to bright and the dungeons are darker but then the fights can deliver too much light and flashes.

I generally liked Recore but honestly don't remember it much at this point. And after putting it down for a few weeks when I came back I had no idea what to do. So I would say stick with it until you beat it or just drop it entirely.

But what I remember most was trying to get this one collectible. It was a sequence of traversing between tall platforms sticking out of sand. There was only way to do it, if you failed it was a long way back to the one place you can climb up to start the sequence, and each platform was barely half a pixel close enough to the max distance you could actually make. So it required perfection. This is literally the only thing I think of when thinking about this game besides diff colored enemies.

KeyWe (PS5) - 7/10 - I've been playing this with my son and it's a lot of fun. There are some collision detection issues from time to time, but in small doses this has been a great couch co-op game. Certainly not as maddening as Overcooked! It does require a lot of teamwork and it's been neat to see how his little brain problem solves and how he gives instructions.

Ive started playing The Quarry. Im enjoying it, but visually it is very distracting. Very weird animations, people look odd, lots of visual artifacts and 30fps. Really wish this had the performance vs fidelity options.

kevolones wrote:

Been playing that as well with my gf
I agree, performance mode woulda been helpful
The controls kinda sluggish
But mainly it feels like, even though there are clearly a ton of outcomes/paths, it rarely feels like you’re making key choices (either it doesnt change what happens regardless of what you select, just how someone feels about it, or you inadvertently “choose” something without realizing that’s what you indirectly chose, feels kinda cheap and random)
Ive also been dealing with ps5 turning off randomly while we play it, seems to happen after about 60-90 minutes

Hmm. I havent played for sessions that long so I havent had that happen. Ive never had my PS5 turn off on its own yet. Hopefully its a bug and not an overheating issue.

Yeah I noticed a reddit thread where a lot of people reported similar - the strange thing is, this was happening occasionally early on but I didn’t realize it (it never turned off while I was playing, but i noticed i wouldnt be able to turn it back on sometimes unless i unplugged from electricity first), then for a while never had any issues, then recently resurfaced. Some are saying updates have caused it to start/stop. Latest update didn’t change anything sadly

I dont think it’s overheating just because it doesn’t feel hot and because I took plates off recently multiple times to clean everything, get rid of dust etc. of course it’s possible I need to do an even deeper clean
Another thing that I tried was changing outlets and plugging it directly into wall, but no change. Of course it’s possible it’s just not getting enough power from either of those two outlets I tried, somehow
It only affects PS5 games not PS4, and possibly not even all PS5 games

In any case, it’s frustrating, but I recently tried just closing the game after an hour before it had a chance to turn off, and then restarting, and got another hour out of it (didn’t test it to the limit). Annoying but potential workaround I guess

I’ll probably end up buying another ps5 anyway for psvr2, hopefully won’t have issues with that one lol

Spider-man: Miles Morales (PS5) - 8/10 - Had this on the shelf for ages but finally dug into it this weekend and beat it tonight. This is really, really well done and a lot of fun but I had a mixed experience.

I had a lot of bugs like the skill challenges not showing on the map or even being able to replay the first ones (even though I had those skills) plus some missions just wouldn't start. I would see the icon and hit triangle but it never activated. Rebooting helped with starting missions but the skill challenges only finally showed up like halfway through the game completely at random. I had tried to access them every night and it never worked...then it did (it reacted like I hadn't done the first ones yet, so it was like starting these fresh). *shrug*

My biggest issue is that having played Spider-man (and all of it's DLC) extensively on PS4, this gives off A+ DLC vibes so it feels too expensive as a stand-alone game...but is too well done and large for DLC. It's basically the same general Spiderman game (same map, similar collectibles, same suit collecting, skill progression) and doesn't feel like a sequel. It's just feels like "more" and although wonderful, or dare I say amazing, this had absolutely zero surprises. But it's better than Spider-man so if you haven't played either, this would be my recommendation. And I'm happy with my experience.

Recore continues to haunt me, thankfully I didn't have to replay the 2nd floor of the tower that I greatly disliked in my prior session and I was able to move into the next cluster of a level. Floor 3 was better with the platforming but each floor has 4 platforming sections wrapped around 3 arenas where you fight waves of enemies and the 3rd arena of floor 3 crushed me. I think it took me over a dozen attempts. You want/need to auto-extract cores from enemies to restore your health as there are a ton of projects flying around but also some phases of the fight you're in radiation and slowly taking damage over time. Well I filled up my inventory likely 2+ full times with extracted cores that I had to just discard, that's how flarking annoying/challenging this fight was for me.
It was 5 phases and often I failed to reach the 4th phase let alone the 5th, some times eating it on the 2nd phase, gah. After much cursing I did beat it and then took a break from that tower. All that frustration let me level up enough to do another dungeon in the DLC, so I went there next. Well the boss there was total crap, it was a large dog plus some flying things that blasted you from around the central platform that you needed to stay on because if you fell off that, the lower area was toxic and could kill you within a few seconds. But double jumping to get back on wasn't a given as the damage you took could cause Jules (your character) to recoil with pain and it was about at the limit of your vertical capacity. Then the dang dog kept coming at you and slammed into you and could stun lock you for at least 2 hits, taking a good 40% of your health with each hit. It also was often there at the ledge to bash you right back off again. There's also that lovely radiation again, so the dungeon that I hoped would be not too bad, took me a good 7 attempts, chocked full of more frustration and cursing too.
The game is just not very good, I now fully wish I wouldn't have tried it but with only a small amount left I want to finish it and I won't likely do anything more in the DLC, as it sucks but I also need to increase around 6 levels just to enter into the next dungeon. I partly went there after the tower to level up some as I figured I must be underpowered, but man my patience with this game is just about gone.

Star Wars: Racer Revenge {} 6/10
I've never seen a Star Wars movie, nor do I plan on it, but once in a while I like checking out games based on the series which is why I originally bought Star Wars Episode 1 Racer on Nintendo64 many years ago. I haven't played it in years, but I remember I had some fun times with that game, especially in split-screen multiplayer. That won't be an option this time, but I didn't care as long as the single player stuff is fun. I was expecting a decent game out of this because the developers (different studio than the original game) had made some other fun racing games during the PS2 era, but this ain't really one of them.

Again, it has been years since I've played the original game and it's entirely possible that if I were to play it now it wouldn't be nearly as fun as I remember it being, but I did watch a couple of reviews on YouTube as a sort of refresher before I started playing this one. The feeling I'm left with from this game is that it isn't a very good sequel. The graphics are hardly much of an improvement over the original, the track designs are nothing special, the overall audio is worse (engine sounds and annoying announcer) and overall if it were stripped of the Star Wars license this would look like just a generic F-Zero or WipeOut wannabe.

Evil West (PS5) - 7/10 - Nothing amazing but it's a very solid AA title. The one thing that absolutely drives me crazy though is that it encourages exploration through super straight-forward level design. And you often reach shiny points in the level to "action" (jumping over a fence, swinging from a rope, etc.) but sometimes you can't go back. So you can hit an area with paths in 3 directions, but if you choose one that doesn't let you backtrack, you miss out on the others. Super dumb way of getting people to replay levels when it's usually just for a small amount of upgrade currency.

Always wondered what’s an AA title vs AAA like is there a defined threshold of sorts or more a feeling
(Serious question)

budget, quality

I really enjoyed Evil West. Great linear action coop game. Something we don’t see too many of nowadays.

Kommie wrote:

Is there a defined border between AA and AAA for both of those (budget wise at least…quality is more subjective)

not really. Like, Kena Bridge of Spirits is AA but has the quality of AAA. Stray is AA and is AA quality.

AA for me is something from a smaller studio that with a little more budget/time could have really had something amazing. But what they put out is great, and usually comes out at a cheaper price.

Evil West is good but there are small things like the homestead hub where it's fairly large and you return there after each mission, but there is almost nothing to do. Feels like some aspect of the game got cut there, like some narrative stuff/talking to NPCs or maybe even side missions. And then later in the game they just toss more enemies at you but there are no surprises.

Stray is a fun little romp and gives me what I expect being a cat would feel like. Kinda a weird plot though but I’ll roll with it. 7.5/10 so far and I’m a little more than half way thru.

I gave Sonic Frontiers (PS5) a whirl again tonight. I'm at the 3rd world, or island, or whatever. I can't really tell as the collectibles are fudging ridiculous.

I know this is Sega and it had a healthy budget, but I consider this a disappointing AAA game...that represents a AA game perfectly. It has the bones of a solid experience but doesn't hit the mark on a lot of aspects, is clumsy, but can be plenty of fun if you find it yourself. The amount of collectibles is laughable, as are the deaths because you didn't make the only-one-way-of-doing-this-route and fail is through the roof.

The old-school levels are great if you hit everything perfectly but still have the awkward thing like continuing to hold right while traversing a 180' ramp to the left. They still haven't solved making this feel right if you don't have full speed and lose momentum. And when it shifts to 3D it's usually far too easy to fall to a death because the camera is looking more back than forward. Super easy problem to solve, but terribly implemented at times.

Sonic Frontiers was terrible for me. Sold it after getting to world 2. Bad Sega. Bad.

I enjoyed 'Sonic Frontiers,' but I also enjoy the environmental puzzles for collectibles in the 'Assassin's Creed' games too, so 'Frontiers' struck a cord for me. If only the pop-in wasn't present in the current-gen consoles.

Monster of the Deep: Final Fantasy XV {} 5/10
I had bought this years ago, I think it released in late 2017 right around the time I got my PSVR.
A VR fishing game, with PS Move support, I thought that right there would make this fun, I didn't care one bit about the Final Fantasy license being attached to it (and from what I've played it didn't really need that license). Unfortunately the PS Move controls just suck. I can't get the damn camera to track my cast motion properly which is the most important part of a VR fishing game (navigating the menus is just as bad). I changed to the DualShock4 controller and am having the same problem. I checked some reviews and it isn't just me. If you can cast and get the thingy to land where you wanted it to on the first attempt, you got lucky. You likely won't be doing it again.

The graphics are decent, there is a pretty detailed character creator. But the game is guilty of a pet peeve that will always annoy me in the VR games that do it: why go through the hassle of making this big immersive world for the player to feel like they're inside it, but then when a cutscene plays it's in freakin' 2D? Stop doing that VR devs, it's gross. Audio is alright...I guess. The characters seem to have the same voice actors as they did from the real FFXV, but this one broad with big boobs and low cut shorts and a thick southern accent, she's gotta gtfo. I never want to hear her speak again.

Anyway, due to frustrations with the controls, it's highly likely that I will not be finishing this game. So much potential was wasted with this.

Little Hope from the Dark Pictures series is eerie and very atmospheric but the acting is stiff at times as are those controls when you get to control a character. And the walk faster button is just as useless as it was in Man of Medan. I am about halfway thru the story. 7/10

I havent played those yet but it is similar in The Quarry, the walk faster button barely makes any difference.