VideoGame_Discussion

Just tried the demo for Forspoken and stopped playing after about 10 minutes. I kinda hate it. The controls are unintuitive, the framerate is poop, the combat is all style no substance, the constant chatter during combat is annoying, and the world is completely barren. Not a very good first impression. This is my biggest issue with modern Square. The combat in all their games takes forever to get used to. It's flashy, sure, but there is too much going on and it just isn't particularly responsive or fun. I just don't have the patience to play any more of this, but I'm eager to hear what others who have tried it think.

This is a bummer because I was looking forward to this, but I may just skip it altogether now. Deleting this demo and jumping right back into the post-game stuff for Midnight Suns!

Heavyd814life wrote:

Yeah I deleted it within 30 min myself. I was excited for it a bit until I played it. Kinda lackluster. The parkour idea is kinda neat tho for a Square style JRPG. The combat controls and world were annoying to me so I uninstalled and removed it from my wish list.

Supersonic Tank Cats {} 3/10
No Gravity Games is back to give away another bundle of turds to Switch owners this holiday season.
I'm someone who will play pretty much any kart racer I can get my hands on. I know the majority of them suck ass in comparison to the king of the genre, Mario Kart, but every now and then you might find a hidden gem. But "hidden gem" sure as hell ain't what this game is. It's one of the most bland kart racers I've ever played. Everything from the graphics looking so bad (PS1 quality), track designs being dull and the music and controls not being any better, I'll never understand how do the developers not realize (or care) that it sucks when they're testing it out? I doubt they had the kind of tight deadline a AAA game would. I'd be embarrassed to have my name displayed in the credits to something like this. Gross.

nonamesleft wrote:


Do you only play in handheld? I don't like the gyro controls in handheld mode but I find when playing docked I do much better with the motion controls enabled. In fact, I wish more games on the PlayStation side would support that feature. I use it a lot in Horizon: Forbidden West and then get bummed when I try to use it in other games only to realize it's not supported.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:
Yeah, I mainly play in handheld mode.

I think I mentioned this here, though not in this thread, but I've spent hours and hours creating a relatively exhaustive bucket list. I started with RPGs, because that is what inspired the idea, and I've been playing through them in (quasi) chronological order.

I finished Final Fantasy Legend, aka Makai Toushi SaGa, today. I owned it when it first came out in the US, but I never got far. The draw for me was and is the non-traditional RPG weaponry like guns, grenades, etc. I played through it on the Collection of SaGa: Final Fantasy Legend on the Steam Deck.

There are far more clouds than silver linings. Weapons decay, generally after 50 uses. Equipment doesn't have stats, so you can assume more expensive stuff is better, but there is a lot of trial and error.

You can choose humans, mutants, and monsters for your party. Humans get equipment but have to have their strength, agility, and HP raised by buying and consuming items that have a roll to determine the improvement. Mutants get random abilities as long as you use other abilities in battle. For the end game I was stuck with almost completely useless abilities for my two mutants and wound up having to exclusively use weapons with them. Monsters, which I was advised not to use on a first play through, evolve by eating the meat of defeated enemies.

It is typically important to me to see where a series came from, so I didn't want to skip this one before moving on to later SaGa games. If you don't share this mental defect, I advise skipping it. I can play 8-bit games in other genres without issue, but, outside of Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy, RPGs from that era are rough. Even with those, I would recommend the Sega Ages and Pixel Remaster versions for the quality-of-life improvements.

SaGa is a VERY MIXED bag. Also hit/miss depending on the entry.

Gypsy wrote:

Are there any in particular you would recommend playing or avoiding?

Lotta folks hate on Unlimited Saga

Yoshi wrote:

Romancing SaGa 3 is probably the best one. As Benstylus said Unlimited SaGa is one widely regarded as bad. I liked Frontier 2 a lot more than the first Frontier. Worth starting most to see how they feel for you though.

Back 4 Blood {} 7/10
I swear I've played this before. These devs really like the "4 humans vs hordes of enemies" schtick and don't wanna step out of their comfort zone, is that it?
While I do have fun playing this, there are times where I'm also kinda bored. I feel it's way too much of just doing the same thing over and over again. Beat the level, then repeat it all over again in the next level, but with different scenery.

What I don't get is there are these card things you're supposed to collect or something, and I haven't even gotten to know what their purpose is. The game explains it pretty early on, but I just didn't care enough to listen. I just wanna shoot these undead mofos, there's no need to make things complicated by adding in new gimmicks.

If you get a good group of friends to join you, you'll have more fun. But I feel bad for anyone who might've bought this with the intention of playing through it solo, because this is a terrible game for that. Even still, I'm glad I paid only something like $20 for this, because I'd want to kick my own ass if I had paid the full $60. But the devs are still supporting it with new content, so if you and 3 friends are enjoying yourselves then there should be enough content here to keep you busy. As for my friend and I, I plan to just move on as soon as we see the credits roll, because there are times the game feels like it's really dragging on.

Been playing God of War Ragnarok, I havent beat it yet but so far its around a 9.5 to me. Id give it a 10 but I have some nitpicks.

I just got to Asgard and I have to say, the character designs in this game are amazing. Theze gods look amazing.

Evil West feels like great coop action linear games from the Gears of War days of olde and I’m digging it. 8/10 so far.

TalonJedi87 wrote:

This one's on my radar now, but I'll probably wait for a cheap GameFly sale TBH.

Ya it’s 47 now on sale on PSN. I wanted to wait for 30 or less myself but my buddy talked me into it for the coop.

Need for Speed: Unbound (PS5) - Maybe a 7 out of 10. There is a lot to like here, but man, the grind is real. I'm used to grinding NFS games but this one feels too slow. The starting car (after the prologue) is terrible and not too fun but you have to use it for far too long.

Although a single race may net you $7k, the buyin will be like $3k so although you think you're going to make a lot you end up with $4k. If you get 1st place. Otherwise you end up with less. And every race adds heat so you may do several races, earn only $6k and then need to head to the garage because your car is to crapty to handle the high heat.

The day heat also carries over to night, and those races make more money so I just stopped doing anything during the day...which is half of the game. And after about half of the races you immediately enter being chased by cops. So that gets old pretty quick.

The progression is based on 4 weeks where you have a week (1 day + 1 night set of events per day) to do things and earn enough money for a tournament qualifier at the end of the week. Beat all 4 qualifiers (1 per week) to get to the final race. The first qualifier was $20k to get in and I barely made that much while also trying to get parts. The second one was $50k and that entire second week I had earned about $70k but couldn't do much with it (certainly not buy a better car, or upgrade my garage for $50k to unlock better parts) so I basically had the same crapty car for half of the game. Where's the fun in that?

I don't see a way to possibly ever be able to afford a $150k car unless you can re-do a week entirely and have things carry over.

Graphics are nice, story is fine, art style is actually good, and it plays nice. There are also some nice cat-and-mouse missions where you have to watch the radar to drive around cops to deliver a car. I enjoyed those bits a lot. It's just the main gameplay loop is starting to no longer be actually fun.

I've been taking a break from RPGs for the last week or so but still rockin' in the best decade, and I've come to solidify an opinion I've held for decades. In terms of third-parties, Konami was head and shoulders above everyone else during the mid-1980s. I've always thought of Konami and Capcom as #1 and #1a, but Capcom really wasn't close until the late 1980s or even 1990s.

Look at some quasi-direct comparisons in terms of sub-genre and release year. Capcom's 1984 1942 is not as good as Konami's 1985 Twinbee, a pleasant surprise I have slept on for way too long, since "cute 'em ups" were never my thing with few exceptions. Capcom's 1985 Section Z barely deserves mention next to Konami's 1985 Gradius, though the idea of the direction-switch button was interesting that far back. Capcom's 1985 Ghost 'n Goblins is similarly obliterated by Konami's 1986 Castlevania. It's conceivable that Konami was able to use what Capcom did to improve their games that are a year later, but now that almost four decades have passed, I am more interested in which ones are worth playing.

Taito and -- to a lesser extent -- Namco are really the only others in the conversation in terms of overall breadth. I haven't gotten to revisit their stuff yet. Companies like Falcom, Tecmo, and Technōs were just getting started, and of course Sega was already a multi-genre powerhouse, but they were a platform holder so excluded from the comparison.

Anxiouz wrote:

Very interesting take. Just finished it up last night. Never felt like a grind at all. In fact, it felt less grindy than most NFS games to me. You get 4 restarts per day and coming in 1st was never too difficult. The progression from week to week felt really nice and the races felt fair. And I love the fact that the heat carries over from day to night. It means you have to be very selective about which races you take on. And you really don't have to do more than 3-4 races a day. With the deliveries you get from Tess and Rydell and the activities around the map, you'll have plenty of money to upgrade your cars. And don't forget that every week you get a chance to win 3 cars, I believe. It's always highlighted on the little progression map. After week 4, I ended up with 10 cars in my garage and over 2 mil in the bank.

It's not a perfect game, but I enjoyed it. The gameplay loop kept me coming back for more and the game doesn't overstay its welcome which is always a plus. The story is meh, but as you mentioned, the graphics and the art style are very nice. I went in with no expectations really and was pleasantly surprised.

Maybe I'll try to be less conservative or just try to progress farther. I did win 2 cars but their stats are terrible and I don't want to waste money on them. My biggest purse so far was I think $18k which is nice but doesn't go very far.

@Heavyd814life Ok, so I won an Evo 9 and after just a couple basic parts it immediately made the game significantly more fun. I escaped a full heat pursuit and am driving better during races. Bummer that this got buried so far into the game (at least for me). I can now see the light at the end of tunnel.

I also only just last night figured out the heat multiplier on the cash you bank so I'll be taking more risks now.

Got through The Lost Legacy (Uncharted) this is my 2nd time beating it and this time did it on the Steam Deck. It's a great game, great story but more climbing and frustrating puzzles than I remember. Length was great for my life right now and the final chapter is easily my favorite (on a train.) I'd love to see Naughty Dog do a sequel for this.

Am finally playing Uncharted Drake's Fortune - 7/10
I'm playing the collection on my but I remembered the opening boat/casket scene and getting into the first temple from a long while back when I tried it on the . I didn't get very far though since I didn't remember the uBoat...
I ended up going 48% through the story on my first session, according to the save file and did right around another 25% tonight.
It's pretty good but darn that upstream jet-ski section was crap. I'm not in love with the controls either, but it's what a 15 year old game now? Without traditional levels or loading screens it's very easy to just keep pushing through it. And really besides two of the jet-ski sections, I've really not had much difficulty with gun fights or even falling to my death. I mean I've died a few times like that, but not enough that I felt annoyed or anything.
Looking forward to wrapping it up and moving into the 2nd title since I've heard it was a big step forward.

Slickriven wrote:

Uncharted 1 was just barely good enough to get me to play Uncharted 2 (the jet ski section is particularly terrible). Glad I did though, because Uncharted 2 is great (a major step up) and Uncharted 4 is one of my favorite games.

Been deep in FF12 recently. Loving it. I get lazy with LP and Gambits but i appreciate the system, gambits are pretty awesome

DrizzDrizzDrizz wrote:

Man, I love FF12! I know it's not everyone's cup of tea and it isn't perfect, but it's honestly one of my all-time fav JRPGs.

EB wrote:

The first jet-ski section was fine, I just blasted through and didn't bother to shoot at the enemies, partly b/c I didn't know how, but it was short and not too bad. The 2nd section was about the same but took a few times for the game to finally tell me what I needed to do to progress, and stop getting killed. But that 3rd, upstream section was where it all became terrible - the controls especially when trying to turn or climb the falls showed up poorly and why am I using the R1 button for acceleration and not R2's linear progression for throttle? I found I really had to take out the enemies to avoid death and no grenade launcher this time but instead a pistol and your ride was affected by the current... Yeah it was crap. But I'm past that and based on the setting am not thinking I'll get another section unless it's headed back to the coast.
Game reminds me a lot of the first 2 Tomb Raider games of the latest reboot trilogy (haven't got to Shadow yet) and I suppose that doesn't surprise me. Obviously TR and Rise are more open world and have crafting/upgrading baked in and are better in some ways, but they came after this game so I'd expect them to be stronger.

The last 2 games I beat were indie games:
Unmetal (Metal Gear parody)
Blazing Chrome (a very good Contra-like game).

Trying to figure out what next game will actually keep my attention. I've started the following recently but none of them have me wanting to play every night and I haven't touched them recently.

DmC: Devil May Cry - Definitive Edition
God of War (2018)
Live A Live
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

Games that I'm considering:
Axiom Verge 2 just came out today on PS+ Essentials.
Ghost of Tsushima - Director's Cut
The Witcher III: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition

Mom Hid My Game

It's a puzzle game. You have to find what looks like a DS by interacting with the items in the environment.

For a game that doesn't have all the bells and whistles, this is surprisingly solid. It's funny at times and clever.

Puzzle games like these, I typically play gradually, as opposed to bingeing the levels.

@Sun What were your thoughts on UnMetal? I almost picked it up in the latest Switch sale but held off.

@Slickriven Yeah, the upstream jet ski section was the one I remember really being terrible. I liked the first two TR reboot games better than Uncharted 1 for sure, though like you said they are newer and therefore should be less janky.

EB wrote:

I found it enjoyable. The humor was funny enough and the gameplay was decent (think old school Metal Gear). The game was decently challenging, but rooted in pattern recognition and timing. Difficulty can be adjusted as well. There are some puzzle aspects to the game as well. I picked it up on sale as well and enjoyed it. I would wait for the next sale. Not overly long (an hour a chapter spread over 10 chapters).

EB wrote:

I pushed through the ending of this tonight. I'll add that the Roman Numeral section was a pain and really the gunfights seemed to ramp up in difficulty in the final 15-20%. There was 2 aspects after that Roman Numerals section that I didn't expect and they sort of felt out of place but eh. I'd add that the final time you regain control of Nate and have only a shotgun sucked too as that section was a PITA with that gun - which you keep into the next section too... which also wasn't well suited for it either.
But it felt like a decent conclusion to the game and didn't feel like there was any cliff hangers or suggestions that a sequel was coming - likely b/c there wasn't until Sony got the review and sales figures to decide upon.

After beating, I had found 50% of the collectables and unlocked some concept art - interesting to see so much of Drake's designs had him with 2 pistols yet that wasn't in my game at all. I also unlocked some graphic filters and tweaks and the 'next gen' filter looked pretty good on the opening boat scene.

Days Gone (PS4 on PS5) - 8.5/10 - This starts off really rough and is kinda confusing but after sticking with it, it started to come together. Although really heavy-handed at times, I enjoyed the overall story and there are a few nice surprises along the way. My biggest complaint is that the game is just far too long and the pacing is inconsistent. The story and the map could have been chopped in half to make this a tighter experience. I don't know what my total game time was to beat this but it's gotta be 40-50h+ at least. I can see how not everyone likes this but I really enjoyed it.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (PS5) - 7/10 - Playing this 2 years late without the new-console launch-title rose-colored glasses on...it's alright. Zero surprises other than you not actually playing Ratchet with Clank together. Things I don't like:

- The extra characters play identical and weapons are shared so it doesn't feel special.
- The pull-the-rift-towards you gimmick is no different than just using a grapple or doing a big air dash. Walking between worlds is cool but the standard gameplay traversal mechanic didn't deserve all the attention it got.
- The maps encourage exploration but you get stuck on geometry regularly. Lots of thinking you can jump on top of something but the game doesn't want you to.
- Cutscenes are not great quality and feel rushed. And the story really isn't very interesting.

It's still been fun as a pallet cleanser after spending an eternity in Days Gone though. And I dig the rocket boots.

I'm a couple of hours into Gotham Knights and it kinda sucks. Looks like the critics and gamers were right about this one. It just feels off. Combat is slow and clunky and boring. Traversal as Batgirl doesn't feel good and the batcycle doesn't feel fast and isn't exciting to drive. I booted up Arkham Knight for a quick comparison and it's amazing how Gotham Knights manages to look worse than an 8-year-old game. It's inferior to Arkham Knight in every imaginable way. And honestly, releasing something this meh with a property this valuable is unacceptable. I knew to temper expectations when I saw it was a WB Montreal game, but this is a pretty big step down from their last game Arkham Origins. Also Batgirl's voice actress is kinda awful. To be fair, it could just be the voice direction and not the voice actress herself, but I really only want to play as Batgirl and I may have to mute it so I don't have to listen to her crappy dialogue.

So yeah, this definitely isn't worth the $70 they tried charging for it at launch. It feels directionless and after only 2 hours, I already know it's going to be a slog. I hope I'm wrong, but this certainly hasn't made a great first impression.

Callisto Protocol 7/10- Took me a little over 12 hours, playing on Max Security (hardest setting). Honestly, save for one part a decent ways into the game, this was an overall fairly easy game. The way the core combat mechanics of the melee works, you just hold a direction and dodge or block, then strike back with counter/melee combos. You eventually get guns and they work about like you think, so nothing too out of the ordinary there. Had some choppiness in random sections, but runs pretty decently now with a couple of patches under its belt at mostly highest settings at 1440p - ray tracing definitely had to be turned off, but the game is gorgeous for the most part even without it, so not worth the performance hit in my opinion. Overall, I enjoyed it for what it was but Dead Space is still king of this hill. If you need something to play, pick it up in a few months when it goes on sale and maybe by then some story DLC will be out as well since the ending is a dangling carrot.

Dasgessabel wrote:

I've been playing Arcade Paradise on PS5. I've got 20-something of the 35 games, and am really enjoying my time with it. I'd probably give it a solid 7-7/5/10. Some of the "arcade" games are actually really fun, albeit knockoffs of preexisting games that I like

Dasgessabel wrote:

I liked this too, nothing special but not as bad as reviews showed. I just wish I had known to not even bother with the Tactical Pistol. Was absolutely worthless and I just sold all the amm I got.

Heavyd814life wrote:

Yeah without a buddy to play with to ease and soften the blow the game is severely lacking in most areas. What a disappointment.

Happy Game {} 7/10
That title is a ruse, I tell ya. They just wanna trick you with that title because this game ain't happy at all, it's psychotic. And that's what I liked about it.

You start as a little boy just before he goes to sleep and has one heck of a nightmare. I don't know how to describe the actual game beyond that other than it's a point-and-click game with some puzzles that aren't really too difficult to figure out. Actually due to the on-screen cursor controls I would probably recommend playing this on PC instead if you have the option, because the controls are a little clunky at times with analog sticks (I didn't play in handheld mode, so I don't know if it supports the touchscreen or not). It's a short game at barely 2 hours long, but I guess that's better than overstaying its welcome.

Borrowed TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge from the library and played through the first 4 stages with my 4-year old. He’s having a blast. Raph is his favorite.

Sun wrote:
Every once in awhile someone mentions taking video games out from the library. Pretty cool that some libraries offer this.