VideoGame_Discussion

Ty The Tasmanian Tiger HD

6/10

I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older or what but those old-school platform games like Banjo Kazooie just aren’t having enough charm to me in my mid 30s anymore. Mostly because I find it highly frustrating to spend hours in a map, trying to find every single little thing when the map design isn’t that great to begin with. Nor is the camera. I’m not sure if I’ll be sticking with this one until the end because I read there are certain requirements you must hit in order to progress further in the story like collect 80% of every collectible in each before you can unlock the boss and I’m not sure I’m about that life anymore.

Alan Wake 2 - 9.75/10 - Excellent game, great story, great graphics, fun gameplay, creepy atmospheric horror like the first game. I highly recommend playing previous Remedy games before starting this one.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown - 9/10 - Initially I was not a fan of the character movements but once it gets going it all clicks and it works great. Excellent platforming, great level design, just lacked in worthwhile unlocks at times and had a few sections that were unnecessarily difficult.

I started to play Sundered this week. Love the visuals/art style but so far the gameplay hasnt clicked. Ill give it another, but so far I dont find it fun

Smalland: Survive the Wild - This game is pretty fun. Its a casual open world survival game. But it has a story. It reminds me a lot of Outward, but without the magic and has mounts you can tame. I say that because of the combat and having to craft armor for the right season (summer/winter), not just a certain area of the map. It does have the normal survival stuff of having to eat, collect resources and build things. But its all very casual compared to most other games like that. I guess its a lot like Grounded. I've never tried that. I might check it out since its on GP. I thought that game was something different. Smalland has also been in early access on steam for over a year, but officially released the other day. Its also on xbox and ps5. Anyway, this game is really good. If you like these kind of games or played and liked palword or outward you will probably like this one too.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage - 7.5/10

This feels like old school Ass. Creed and I’m digging it. The focus on going almost all stealth at times and its setting remind me of the very first game with Altair 17 years ago. The game map isn’t as big as the previous more recent entries which is nice and there is more of a focus on just story missions with a sprinkle of side contracts here and there which take mere minutes to complete so it doesn’t stray from the story. My only complaints so far are the graphics not being as good as I would have expected, some wonky feeling timing on the controls and believe it or not the load times when you’re fast traveling for some reason take longer than I anticipated. I’m playing it on the PS5 and fast traveling takes about 10-12 seconds, even if the fast travel point is relatively close which feels long to me in an age when load times are almost non-existent anymore. I guess when they priced this game out at $50 their budget excluded graphical fidelity, an HDR option and quick load times. But other than that I’m having a good old fashioned AC sneaky stealth time.

Archer wrote:

I was hoping it would be on switch to play with the younguns. Probably very demanding.

TalonJedi87 wrote:

Have you played Valhalla? I haven't yet. I know Mirage is a prequel, and some say Mirage can be played first while others say more is gotten out of Mirage if Valhalla was played first.

Valhalla is the only AC game I haven’t played and most likely won’t ever play it because of its length. Any game that’s 200 hours long terrifies me. Especially an AC game that’s full of tick boxes and redundant gameplay. 200 hours of that sounds like a chore.

Gotcha. I haven't played 'Odyssey' or 'Valhalla' yet. I have both for PS4, but want to play them on PS5 (which I don't have yet) because they run better. But with 'Mirage' on sale, I'm tempted to get it, because I miss old school AC so much.

Feeb wrote:

Actually seems odd this isn't on Switch. This would be the perfect Switch game. Its not very graphic intensive, so I don't think it would be taxing for the switch. And even on PS5 its modular loading, if you run too fast you come across bugs who are loading in or just standing around and their ai wont kick in until you get close. So I think it would be fine on switch.

SYNTHETIK: Legion Rising - so far I like this, but it seems like I'll be playing it on and off a lot as it's pretty hard

DCGX wrote:

Oh yeah then I’d definitely pull the trigger on Mirage. It’s the closest experience you’ll get to the AC1-3 days. A very concise story with only a fraction of things to do compared to modern day AC games.

Valhalla is daunting. Overwhelming is also a good word. There is SO MUCH to do it makes me not want to play it. Odyssey was straddling that line, but I finished it. I can’t bring myself to play more Valhalla.

I played Vampire Survivors for the first time the other day. It’s fantastic.

I'm still waiting for Mirage to have a significant sale. I have a hard time paying more than $25 for Ubisoft games now days. They don't really put a lot of effort into their games anymore. Its all just lazy copy paste of past games with minor story changes.

BucketofJustice wrote:


Dude what you just said was precisely how I felt. I struggled so much to get thru Odyssey and I love Greeky mythos. Origins I thought was meaty enough even while bloated but then Odyssey pushed that bar way over the line of bloated to sheer overwhelming standards then Valhalla said f it I’m just gonna be AC WoW.

Archer wrote:

@Bleed_DukeBlue was kind enough to sell me his copy of Mirage on here for the great price of $25, which too is all I’m willing to pay for most Ubi games nowadays.

I loved Origins, but other games took precedent over Odyssey and Valhalla when they came out (I got the gold steelbook editions of each, cheap, eventually).

I think I might just get Mirage. I'm ok with $35 for the Deluxe Edition.

Lies of P - solid
I'm not normally a soulsborne player and I'm FAR from good at this game, but I'm getting better and enjoying it. It looks great and after playing with the controls and dying a bunch I'm taking on the 2nd main boss.
I've learned to farm materials by fighting the same areas some and I want to look into a guide to get pointers on when I should use resources to upgrade my weapons. I'm hesitant to waste them too early, but feel like I'm maybe a touch weaker due to not doing almost any resource based upgrading.
The electrical weapon I've got has been pretty decent at taking down the normal foes and surprisingly was the weapon I used to kill the first human, so I've stuck with it. But I feel like digging into more info online could help me understand if my tactics are good or misguided, and when to push into upgrades.
I do find it strange that there's really no music during exploration.
I'm like 6 hours in and not very far but really only 1 section had annoyed me, but that was after I changed the controls around and was still adjusting to that. So slow and steady will likely be my path forward.

DCGX wrote:

Actually, there was still a seller on Amazon that had a new Launch Edition for $30. I didn't even know there was a launch edition. It comes with three lithographs and a physical map.

Spider-man 2 - 8/10 / ps portal

Terrific game. Tons going on in this iteration of spider-man. Probably the best looking Spider-Man game to date. Loved the web wings addition although (for me) I found my self using web wings 90% of the time so very little web swinging through the city which kind of pulls you out of the spider-man experience at least imo. Same ol same ol fighting mechanics, has always felt like button mashing to me. Story delivery is awesome as always, like a comic book come to life; not a huge fan of the alternate origins if you will. I only focused on main missions but will go back and do some side quests just to web wing through the city some more. Very enjoyable experience.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart {} 9/10

Alright, I'm gonna sidetrack for a bit right here. So just for old times sake I decided to watch Toy Story on Disney+ and it was my first time watching it in probably over 20 years, but now for the first time I got to see it in 4K, HDR, all that jazz.
But what does that have do with this game? Well it's just that after the movie ended I decided to start this game up for the first time and oh my goodness does this game look good. Like, really good. It made me remember back in 1995, the big question among us gaming nerds at the school lunch table was "will video games ever reach the same level of Toy Story graphics?" And I wish I could go back in time as current me to let those little punks know that video games will have not only matched Toy Story "graphics" in our lifetime, my boys we have f'n surpassed it.

This isn't exactly the first game to make me feel that way, but when I first started playing I just was so impressed, especially after just having sat through Toy Story, that's what brought out the comparison. I really like that we have reached the point where all cutscenes can be done with in-game graphics now and it's so seamless that you can't always tell the difference when a cutscene ends and the gameplay begins again because there's no load screen or fade to black when the cutscene is over. I want that to be the standard from now on. The hardware is clearly capable of it, but yet so few developers put in the freaking effort.

Now I could keep rambling on about the graphics, how nice the lighting effects are, how steady the frame-rate is even when in 4K with ray-tracing enabled, and how much time I spent in the game's photo mode taking screenshots, but I'll shut up about that now and talk about some other things, starting with the 3D audio. It sounds good, and there's a setting specifically for the Pulse 3D headphones in the options menu and that's always a plus. The bass from the music sounds good, as does bass from explosions. Also the character voices all sound good, and I have no complaints regarding the voice acting, I haven't been annoyed by any of the characters (there's usually at least one character in these types of games that get kind of annoying).

The controls as well, really good usage of the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers (it's a first-party game so I'd expect nothing less). For the haptic feedback, just neat little touches like for example there is a nightclub section early on and once you enter the room the controller vibrates to the beat of the music, like you're feeling the bass. For the adaptive triggers, when firing your weapon, the harder you press the faster you'll shoot.
The rest of the game controls great, except for this one part when you're flying on a pterodactyl, I found those flying sections to not control well. But when you're on the ground everything is fine.

So my history with the Ratchet & Clank series is brief. The first game released all the way back in 2002, but I just never got around to playing it. I kind of blame Super Mario Sunshine for temporarily making me completely uninterested in 3D platformers for a while around that time due to its horrid camera and I thought because Nintendo was unable to produce a 3D platformer with a decent camera, that must mean nobody else is able to get it right either.
I can admit now that I was wrong to think that, because I finally played the first R&C last January, 20 years after its release. I enjoyed it a lot, though there were some questionable design choices in it, but most importantly the camera wasn't an issue, they did what Nintendon't (at least by 2002 standards). I followed it up a few months later by playing the PS4 reboot of it, which pretty much fixed the few problems I had with the original release. I actually would like to check out some of the other games in the series, but I worry they'll feel too outdated after playing this one.

So besides this game, those are the only two in the series I've played. I'm enjoying this even more than I did those other two. I like the Rift mechanic even though I don't feel it is used as much as it should be, and the swapping between characters when needed to make progress (that part is something I don't always like when other games do it) and thankfully all weapon upgrades carry over between them. I wouldn't mind one bit if they did something more with that new lombax character and made the next game co-op or something

Vampire Survivors for Xbox Series X. Fantastic game. Solid 9/10.

Resident Evil 4 {2} 10/10

No regrets on waiting to play this until I was able to do so in VR, just like I did with RE7 and RE8. I feel like that was the right choice. Sorry if this is coming off as mumbo jumbo, I've just been writing down various thoughts as I've been playing through it (currently at Chapter 12).

So to start off with a somewhat negative, the graphics are good, there are some damn good lighting effects, but to be honest I did expect slightly better visuals from my first AAA PSVR2 game. The fire effects and explosions just don't look that great.

The audio is great though. The explosions sound good (much better than they look), voice acting is fine by me, I've heard fans of the series crap on Ada's new voice actor but I didn't have a problem with her at all. The sound effects in general are good, multiple times I've heard an enemy nearby and knew right where the sound was coming from which allowed me to sneak up on them (more on that later).

Controls for the most part are quite good. Actually in the beginning I outright didn't like them, but really I just needed to get used to them.
It took me a little while to adjust to the fact that I need to hold the shotgun with two hands, and give it that little "pump" after firing each shot, for example. Or that I have to manually reach down into the pouch thingy with my left hand to grab ammo to reload the gun in my right hand. Once I got used to it all, I really liked the controls. I feel like this is now the definitive way to play RE4, it finally took the crown from the Wii version. The game overall makes good use of the haptic feedback too.

Having said that though, there was one puzzle in particular where you have to rotate these hexagonal things. I have nothing good to say about that part, because the controls were uncooperative and I had almost rage-quit for the night. There were a couple of other parts too where when you turn your hand to rotate an object, Leon's in-game hand doesn't exactly turn the way it should be. Those parts don't happen often though.

The controls on the speedboat could use some work too. You hold R2 to accelerate and that's pretty much it. Just putting light pressure on the button won't do anything, so you're either parked or going full speed, not much room for in-between.

I do think it is kinda wack that your save file is tied between VR or flat, meaning you can't play in VR until the VR2 Sense controllers' batteries die and then continue in flat mode. That isn't much of a problem for me though since I don't intend on ever playing it flat anyway, but still it kinda sucks and I don't recall it being an issue in Resident Evil 7 on the last-gen PSVR.

One cool thing I want to point out is that I've been using my knife a lot, and in addition I've been using it to stealth kill zombies from behind. First off, I almost never use the knife in Resident Evil games. You get so many cool guns to defend yourself with, who has time for a knife? But stealth kills make it worth upgrading your knife in this one. I would never play stealthily in the flat games because they've never really encouraged you to play that way in RE before, but in VR it's really fun to sneak up on a zombie and stab them in the neck. And yes, I know they're technically not called zombies in this game, but I'll never not call them that. And the mini-boss knife fight later in the game, VR just makes that so much more fun (same for the minecart section, which I was looking forward to but it ended up being shorter than I remember.)

Another thing to say is that...the game just isn't very scary, even in VR. Now you may say "no duh" to that, because this was where the series sorta shifted away from its survival/horror roots and became more action, but it feels abundantly clear now. It's like a night and day difference between playing Resident Evil 7 in VR and Resident Evil 4 in VR. In Resident Evil 7 there were lots of scares, and the whole atmosphere was creepy. In Resident Evil 4, well I'm at Chapter 12 so far and the first moment of the game that scared me was a short scripted sequence in Chapter 5 or 6 (I think) where I was walking on a wooden platform and fell through it with no warning. There have been a couple moments later on too where I was surrounded by enemies and one snuck up on me from behind and I wasn't expecting that. I don't mean to imply there are no scares at all, but it's not like RE7. But later on you realize the game gets way more intense than RE7 did.

The game also isn't very "VR AF", (the slang term the VR kiddos use these days for VR games that really immerse you in the experience). You can't just pick up random items on tables scattered throughout the game, doors and drawers are opened by pressing the X button instead of you actually using your hands to open them, and cutscenes are all 2D. Since it's a hybrid flat/VR game, I'll give it a pass on not being able to pick up random objects, but hybrid or not I don't like 2D cutscenes in my VR games, that just comes off as lazy IMO.

One more little nitpick that I don't really even need to mention because it affects so many other VR games too, is that when walking it really feels more like your character is just gliding across the floor. I feel like not many VR games get that part right, but it's not a deal breaker or anything.

Despite some of my minor complaints, I'm really enjoying the game. It's not perfect (no game is, just because it gets scored a 10 doesn't mean it's without flaws), but they've managed to make an already great game even better. I do not want this game to end.

Slickriven wrote:

I feel the same way, just got this recently on PS5. It has been enjoyable and certainly met my expectations for an indie title. It’s a nice chill exploration game with minimal combat but it’s also pretty clumsy.

The “map” is really just a way to select which zone you fast travel to, and the way you check side mission progress by hovering over a certain section of the map and it shows in a little side tab is vague and easy to overlook. The NPC doesn't even have to be in that area. Weird.

And having to go to the robot companion dude to ask if you got all collectibles in that area or not sure seems like it should have been something just listed on the map as "# out of 4". And the only way to see all of your outfits is to go to the change outfit option...by asking him.

The game tries to overcome some of those flaws by throwing a story at you but none of it makes any sense and it only gets worse as it goes on.

The most frustrating thing for me has been the slo-mo button that then lets you grapple. It's awfully inconsistent. You can sometimes grapple from a mile away but during bosses you can't always use it? Only on certain nodes and not all of them? And sometimes you can use it multiple times in a row and it doesn't need to recharge. Very bad UX for such a key aspect of the game.

This sounds all negative but i've enjoyed it and am 3/4 through it. Got it for $16 and that price feels fair.

Cyberpunk 2077 - boring/10

I’m about 4 hours in and I don’t really want to play any more. I hate abandoning games tho, especially when I was as eager as I was to finally play this game. It’s just not vibing with me.

Does it get better? Do I need to sink more hours into it? Maybe I’ll shelf it and come back or maybe I’ll trade it for something better.

nah, it sucks

bill wrote:

Thanks Bill. That’s a shame cause it looks great… oh well moving on then.

It sucks, yes.

loztdogs wrote:

That's exactly how I felt. Granted I was playing it near launch on a PS4 Pro, but nothing about the characters or story was interesting to me.

Helldivers 2- disappointment/10. On paper, I should have really liked this. I love co-op online shooters with progression systems, and I played several matches for a couple of hours, but it’s just not very fun. The servers were a pain, and getting into a game took awhile. Once I was in, it was annoying how easily you run out of ammo on higher difficulty levels while engaging with a bunch of enemy robots. Every time you want a new weapon or more resources, you have to pull down a drop-down menu and press a series of buttons like “up down left up right up down” to send supplies down and then wait for the supplies to land. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s just an unnecessary interruption you have to deal with over and over again. The gunplay is OK, the graphics are great in cutscenes but muddy in-game. I was looking forward to this one, and it was just kinda meh. On the plus side, it’s sold out everywhere, so I was able to sell it for $50 on Mercari and more or less got paid to play this.

Star Wars Jedi Survivor -

A grappling hook of a good time/10

Seriously I think people in the writers room at the developer just sat in a round table and said oh boy how can we really make this game any better than the first? And one guy was like guys guys gals gals… Grappling hook.

The grappling hook was always great in Zelda games.

Oh yeah, Zelda pioneered the grappling hook. Good times man.

Played Robotron 64 for the first time today. Got to level 194 and finally got game over.

It's a fun game bug some of those later levels are surely impossible to do on one life.

loztdogs wrote:

Never got too far in that game. I finished the 1rst main mission and met with the Asian dude at the dinner. Havent gotten back to it since

Moved on to Diablo IV / Portal

Much more promising/10

I'm 2 hours into Persona 3 Reload and I don't think I like it. At all. I've played other remakes of games I love and never had an issue with changes, but this one just isn't clicking. I'm trying to keep an open mind though and I definitely need to stop comparing every little thing to the original, but everything just feels...off. The soundtrack just doesn't sound right and the voice acting, while not bad, just doesn't sound right either. I don't like Yukari's voice actress at all. And I don't mind Mitsuru's new voice actress, but Tara Platt, who voiced the OG Mitsuru, has a really unique voice and I keep expecting to hear her and then I don't and it's kinda jarring. Still very early on, though. Fingers crossed that it grows on me because the original is probably my fav JRPG of all time.

Oh wow. That’s a shame. Was hoping it would rub off some P5 attributes in the gameplay and soundtrack. That’s a bummer though.

I haven’t revisited p3 since ps portable. I definitely recognize the music but it does seem like it has been made more “complicated” or something. Maybe it’s just the fidelity of the newer sound- but it’s off for sure. Sort of like listening to NIN with headphones- you miss more than you hear when it’s not as clear- and that can be good or bad.

Heavyd814life wrote:

This is exactly how I felt for the first few hours, maybe like 5 or more hours. But then I tried to play the OG and Portable version, and it made me appreciate the updates. I got over the voices, but never got over the music.

I will also add, that I found a lot of the voice changes to end up being better. Like a lot of the non SEES members. Yuko (sports team manager) being the most outstanding change in voice acting. The non SEES members ended up being way better because of the full voice acting. And lot of the VA nailed the characters. But for SEES, it did take me a long time to get over Yukari (shes too nice and not sarcastic/mean enough). Mitsuru sounds pretty close to me after a bit.

Severed Steel - If Mirrors Edge was good it would be this game.

DCGX wrote:

And despite the Amazon listing saying launch edition and the packing slip saying launch edition, I receive the regular edition, so it's going back. I'll have to wait a little longer to play this.

Archer wrote:

Yeah dude I think I was just being a bit of a crybaby. It's definitely jarring at first, but I'm about 5 hours in now and I really don't mind the voice acting or even the soundtrack anymore, tbh. I like Color Your Night a lot (the track the plays when you go out at night). It's a better fit for the downtempo/mellow feel the new OST has. And the QOL improvements to gameplay are objectively great and an upgrade over the original. So yeah, I'm definitely enjoying it but I'm sure I'll find something else to complain about at some point lol

DCGX wrote:

29.97

ASSASSIN'S CREED MIRAGE - STANDARD EDITION, PLAYSTATION 5 https://a.co/d/65Oy1U9

Heavyd814life wrote:

I also really like Color Your Night as well. But I also really liked When the Moon Reaches Out, the one it replaced. But it was a bit too upbeat like you said, so the new one fits better. The only song that kept upsetting me was the advantage battle song. Hearing It's Going Down, and the lady yelling "Disturbing the peace" constantly I found annoying. It reminded me of P5 every time. I don't honestly know why either. But it did, and I didn't like that. Mass Destruction should never have been relegated to just standard battle music. The -reload- version of it isn't bad either. So not sure why these two were not swapped. It made me go out of the way to not get advantage a lot of time, lol.

One of the tracks has a rhythmic “beep” that I hate. It’s in the mall area I think because I run inside a shop and it stops.

Feeb wrote:

I don't have a PS5, but I reordered the Launch Edition for Xbox yesterday for $39.99, with free delivery for this morning. I was up around 4am to see they dropped it another $10, but it was too late to cancel or change my order. So I ordered it AGAIN, for free delivery for today, and I'll return the copy from yesterday's order.

I better gosh darn love this game lol

All versions are that price on Amazon- or were this AM. At least you scored one. Hopefully you like it!

Feeb wrote:

I don't think I know what song you are talking about. Which shopping area, Paulowina (velvet room, arcade, etc) or Iwatodai (old couple, wilduck burger, etc), and during the day or at night?

Pretty sure it was paulowina mall. It may be my pulse explore buds- these things have been a mess.

I think evening. I know for sure whatever it was stopped when the track changed- and it’s happened a few times.

Archer wrote:

Think I figured it out- it may not be the music tracks- but if you stand still for about a minute a beeping noise happens about every second - I guess it’s to alert you? I’ve just got it to repeat three times while standing in the strip mall- during the after school. It will stop if you go to menu or interact with a door or by itself after a few beeps as well.

Edit - now I’m not so sure it isn’t part of the track- lol- it does not stop when I go to menu or interact- it’s just a pretty short series of beeps.

New Tales of Borderlands - I liked it, but also hated it. The two of the main characters are just so overly annoying, you have to see all 5 endings for the Plat and I said I would not before I have to take it back to the Library.. but If I get Price of Persia done and platinumed and have time left I may just have to.
I hate how one piece of the story is left unanswered maybe in one of the other 4 endings it will... We will see.

I love the library for these sorts of games... To bad the Expanse does not have a physical release.

Archer wrote:

Dude I felt the same way! But then I found myself bopping to it after a little while and now I legitimately love it! It's crazy how much of a 180 I've done on the new OST. It's such a great remake so far. I'm 25 hours in now and it's crazy how good a job Atlus has done refining/modernizing the experience while still retaining the essence of what makes P3 so special. I really wanted to dump this game after about 2 hours and just boot up FES but now I doubt I'll be able to go back to either FES or P3P.

Mafia II: Definitive Edition (PS4) - 5/10

I think the actual story is fine and there are some interesting bits plus some fun missions. But 80% of the game is you just driving from point a to point b to continue the story. Driving is dull and sloppy since the cars are 1950's era, and the world is completely empty from anything you can actually do. The fact that there are collectibles to seek out in such a large map where you can't interact with anything is comical.

I liked the first Mafia, and maybe I don't remember if it was like Mafia 2, but this one is just so much boring driving to do a single button press to cue up a cutscene. Then repeat but at another location.

Skully {} 6/10

I originally bought this because it looked like a 3D platformer that would come from the N64-era. Not so much like a Banjo-Kazooie, but more like one of the C-tier platformers of those years, like Glover or something. The game has so far wound up to be just slightly above-average overall though (so, like Glover). Granted that could change since I haven't finished it yet, but I don't think it will since I'm currently at level 11 out of 18. I wouldn't call it one of the worst 3D platformers I've played on Switch, but it is easily one of the ugliest games I've played on Switch. It uses a dynamic resolution to help keep the frame-rate steady, so the resolution dips low at points, and I mean low. You can expect a lot of your playthrough to be in standard definition, that's for sure. I've looked up gameplay footage of the game on PC and the other consoles, it looks better obviously, but I can't excuse how bad of a job they did with the visuals on Switch. Sometimes they expect you to sacrifice too much quality just to have the benefit of being able to play it portably. And of course there are the players that will always prefer frame-rate over resolution, however the frame-rate still drops in places, so on the Switch it's a lose/lose situation either way.

I took a couple of screenshots to show as examples. I put them in spoiler tags, though there is no actual spoiler contained in them.

Anyway, I've crapped on the graphics enough (they deserved it). Now I'll talk about the rest of the game, starting with how much of a freakin' collect-a-thon it is. Collect-a-thon is a phrase I first heard of when it was used to describe Donkey Kong 64 many years ago, where to get 100% in the game you had to get thousands of collectibles. Well, the same can be said here, if you intend to go for 100% then you should expect to have to hunt down thousands of collectibles, 5,500 to be precise, with hundreds per level (the first level had 200, third level had 400+ fifth level had 500 etc.) they just went overboard with this crap, and from what I can tell you'll only be rewarded with concept art and to me that just isn't worth it (does anyone here look at concept art once you unlock it in a game?)

You don't spend the entire game rolling around as the skull, but you will spend a lot of the game doing that. The skull is made of clay, so you cannot get wet or that equals death, but thankfully checkpoints are plentiful. There will be certain sections of each level where you will have the ability to transform into a...creature (idk what it is). I guess they are made of clay too, because they will also die if they get wet long enough, but there are three different ones you will get to change into during your journey and each one has different abilities. One has the ability to punch over certain rocks to make a bridge, aother has the ability to run fast and the ability to move rocks to form platforms that make it easy for you to jump across bodies of water or lava. The third has the ability to levitate rocks and to double-jump to reach higher areas. There are certain puzzles where you will need to switch between all three and utilize each of their abilities but it is made tedious by the fact that once you exit the creature, as the skull you must roll back to the checkpoint area to spawn the next creature.

The controls overall for the most part work fine, and I haven't had too many issues with the camera, except for a few spots where the camera was locked behind you or in front of you in an auto-scroll/chase sequence level and it would sometimes be difficult to keep track of the little skull or to judge the correct distance you need to jump to the next platforms. As for the game's story, the cutscenes have minimal animation in them (which again makes it feel like a N64 game) but the voice acting isn't bad. Underneath some of the game's issues I feel there lies a semi-decent game in all of this, I just wish I hadn't settled for the ugliest version of it when I had better options (PS4 or PC, which the game is currently on sale on each of those platforms for $3).
Yesterday I ended up buying a half dozen more PSVR2 games in the current PSN sale and I really want to play them, but I worry if I stop playing this game to start up one of those, I won't want to return to this one after, so I'm going to try and stick with it and finish the second half of the game and then move on.

Edit: I ran into a glitch that doesn't let me progress on Level 14. It sucks this had to happen when I only had 3 or 4 levels to go, but I'm giving up on this game now. I'd lower the score even further now but I don't think it affects everyone.

Picked up Sports Talk Baseball for Genesis on a whim.

Thanks to playing on a system with save state support, I'm currently at 130 to 0 in the first inning

How many pitchers do they have? Yikes.

Feeb wrote:

They are finally out of relief pictchers. I think they had 6.

Been playing GameCube version of windwaker. While I’m having a blast… the camera is crap.

Race The Sun {} 6/10
This is a hybrid game. It was given on PS+ 8 or 9 years ago, I remember because I recall originally playing this on PS Vita but I don't remember enjoying it very much. Since then I see they added a VR mode to the PS4 version, so I decided to give it a try. It's maybe a little cooler to play it in VR, but overall I still am not enjoying it very much. It's inspired by old arcade games, which means it is best played in short bursts, but you're basically racing through these areas and trying to last before the sun goes down. There's way better VR games to play. This felt a lot like they just flipped a switch and turned their game into VR with little effort.
-=-
Horror Adventure: Zombie Edition {} 3/10
Of all the years I've been gaming, I've played some real turds (sometimes intentionally). This ranks pretty high up there on the list of the worst games I've ever played. This reminds me of a Nintendo 64 game in VR, because not only are the graphics just awful, but there's this annoying fog that prevents you from being able to see more than 10 feet in front of you.

To start off with, I selected to play the tutorial right from the main menu. It was trash, because it would tell you to do things but not tell you which button you're supposed to press to do them. Also when I'd pause the game, the pause menu would show up behind me causing me to have to turn around to be able to see it, and re-centering via holding the Options button didn't fix it. So after quitting to the main menu so I can start the actual story mode and just figure everything out on my own, I was disappointed to see I had to play through the tutorial yet again. This time I just ran through the tutorial ignoring most of the messages and once the campaign started I knew then what kind of crap show I was really in for. The intro CGI cutscene was so low budget, there were typos, and the characters were mispronouncing words because they were voiced by some cheap AI program. I looked up a video of the PC VR version when I was done playing this. It's still a bad game on PC VR, but overall it looks lightyears ahead of this piece of crap version. Even for $1.49 this was a rip-off.

Farpoint {} 8/10
I wish I hadn't waited so long to play this. I'm pretty sure I've owned it for at least 4 or 5 years now, but I kept hearing how much better it is with the Aim Controller, and I just didn't want to buy one of those because Sony has a history of releasing peripherals and then not supporting them for long (Nintendo is the same freakin' way). Surprisingly the Aim Controller got more support than I expected, but I still personally wasn't sold on it and it was more of just the idea of buying a peripheral (Aim controller) that would only be compatible with certain games made for another peripheral (PSVR). That didn't stop me from buying PS Move controllers though, even though I can't use them in a non-VR game...) But anyway, finally I just dove right in using my plain ol' DualShock 4. I'm having fun with the game despite some tracking issues, but I don't doubt that the Aim controller is the superior way to play this game.

First off, graphically, this looks surprisingly good for an early PSVR game. Even more surprising is how this small dev team was able to pump this out, and it stands toe-to-toe with some of PSVR's big AAA games that were released by much bigger studios. I feel like with a little bit of tweaking, they might have been able to pitch this as something for the Aliens license. The audio is good too, I'm digging the music, and the voice acting is all done well. Even the story is good. The controls are where I'm having some trouble. Since moving in late 2022 I've pretty much always kept the PS Camera on top of my TV and have not been having too many issues with tracking in most games, but this game suggests putting the camera below the TV. I did that, and the tracking is a little better, but still gives me some trouble here and there, just not as much. I give the game props though for being able to aim down the scope of a gun. In my experience that isn't so easy to do in a lot of VR shooting games. Also, nothing to do with my enjoyment of the game itself, but a neat little feature is you can see what time it is on your character's watch. I kinda wish more VR games did that so you can see what time it is without having to open the home menu, because sometimes when you want to play a VR game but you want to stop playing at a certain time to do something or maybe a TV show coming on or whatever, it's easy to lose track of time once that VR headset is put on.

As far as the gameplay itself, it's like most typical Sci-fi first-person shooters out there. I don't know if Halo is to blame for this, or if they're just the ones that popularized it and it now became standard across every shooter, but I do kinda not like the fact you're limited to only carrying two guns at a time. I had an issue where I found a sniper rifle, I dropped my assault rifle to pick up the sniper rifle, wasn't really liking it too much and I wound up dying and when I restarted at the checkpoint I had lost my assault rifle for good and had no choice but to adapt to using the sniper rifle now. Luckily I did get the hang of it though and it has come in quite handy. Another thing Halo popularized is regenerating health. You'll need it in this game, because there are times where you are going around kicking ass, but then a big swarm of enemies appear and you're the one now getting your ass kicked. This random difficulty spike seems to happen once or twice per level, it's not that the enemies turn into bullet sponges, it's just that you become greatly outnumbered by them.

What kind of impresses me about this game is that it was the dev studio's first game. You can't really find much info about the developer either, they don't even have a Wiki page and their website's News section hasn't been updated in three years. I'd really like to see what they can cook up on PSVR2 but it might not ever happen, and that's sad. Sony published this game, I don't know any PSVR owners who didn't like it, so why isn't Sony throwing more money at this dev team for a sequel?

'Farpoint' is excellent! I wish we were seeing more games like this from Sony (or any games at this point) for PSVR2. Considering Sony just closed their London studio, it almost feels like they've thrown in the towel on PSVR2 already. Shame.

I bought Aim controller just for Farpoint and it was so worth it

Farpoint with the aim controller was great. I got stuck at one of the bosses mid-way through the game though for a loooong time. Eventually got past it but that bummed out my experience quite a bit. Everything before and after seemed to go pretty smoothly and was enjoyable.

DCGX wrote:


Yeah, everyone was asking why the PSVR2 wasn't compatible with PC, and now that it will be later this year I don't know how to interpret that. Was this something they were planning from day one, or do they want to use this as a way to just want to wash their hands of VR now? I mean, we're 3½ months into the year and they have no 1st party games to show, that's not a good look. We know there's a Astro Bot game coming possibly later this year, but we're only left hoping that it's for VR, that part has yet to be confirmed. Some people expect it'll be a hybrid game, but what made the first Astro Bot so good was that it was built for VR and that experience wouldn't have been anywhere near as good if played flat.

I've only had my PSVR2 since early January, and I've had fun with it and don't regret my purchase yet, but by the end of this year they need to convince me I didn't make a mistake buying one over a Quest 3.

Anxiouz wrote:

I got stuck for a while against that huge spider thing but eventually prevailed

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

I don't know. I could see them testing behind the scenes the whole time, and I can seem them making a desperate move. PSVR2 is definitely one of the best headset. I'd still choose it over Quest 3, because that already looks dated (and I don't like Meta), but especially if it gets PC support. I do think it's extremely odd Sony themselves haven't released a game since launch. I don't get it. An exclusive 'Astro Bot' game may reignite interest.

Resistance: Retribution {} via {} 7/10

I miss the Resistance series. The first game I felt was good but not great, a good starting point for the franchise by 2006 standards though. But Resistance 2 and Resistance 3 were so much better. Resistance: Burning Skies on the PS Vita was...better left forgotten about, but now playing this game for the first time, I am impressed knowing that they managed to pull this off on a PSP, even seeing it for the first time 15 years later. The controls feel a bit clunky, but I can only imagine how they were on an actual PSP without the second analog stick (or nub). And I do question their decision to open a game on a handheld system with an 8 minute cutscene.

But I've put a couple hours into this and that's all I wanted to do, I didn't plan on actually finishing it, I just wanted to see how it was and to see how well it aged, and I am pleased with it. I remember reading back in the day that the game had a fun online mode, but that's no longer an option here unfortunately.

Been playing Sifu and its amazing. I can see myself replaying this easily.

Persona 3 Reload - 10/10

They took the blueprint of the original game and added a ton of new wrinkles and many QOL improvements I didn't even know I wanted. The end result is what feels like the true definitive edition of what I consider the best JRPG of all time. This is either my 5th or 6th time beating P3 - I've honestly lost count at this point - and it completely consumes every time. The grind of Tartarus, the social sim, the incredibly strong characters and story...it's 100+ hours of JRPG bliss that I never ever want to end. I've either stayed up way too late or gotten up way too early over the past 3-4 weeks to try to fit as much of it into my schedule as possible. I don't think my girlfriend will let me touch my PS5 for at least a couple of weeks but it was sooo worth it! Oddly enough this was my first time completely maxing out entire party in any Persona game. Got everyone up to level 99 and I think that's because Atlus absolutely nailed the gameplay loop. The combat improvements and the way Tartarus has been upgraded and balanced so it's both challenging and rewarding made me just want to keep grinding and grinding. I really milked the final month of the game because I just didn't want it to end. The tweaks made to the music, the presentation, and the story in the final month of the game are pretty damn perfect. Honestly can't say enough about the job Atlus did with this remake.

But as much as I want to gush over this game, I still can't believe Atlus is charging extra for The Answer. I guess that's just the way they roll these days so no point complaining about it. I'm sure they'll release a "complete" version at some point - maybe when the Switch 2 launches - so I'll probably end up just waiting for that.

Yeah I’m waiting for the COMPLETE edition before I dive into P3 Reload. I’m riding high off P4 Golden now so I’m good waiting a bit to play P3. Still can’t see how it’ll top P5 for me though but it’s welcome to give it the ol’ college try. P5 was just breathtaking in every sense for me.

I prefer P3 characters, story and the grindy dungeon crawl. Reload just reinforced all the reasons it was my favorite.

Prince of Persia lost crown - 7/10 / portal

Meh… as others have mentioned, would have preferred a traditional Prince of Persia rather than this Metroidvania style. While the platforming is solid it does begin to wear thin about halfway through. It feels like a mobile game to me. I think it’s the art style Ubisoft chose. Not a fan. I don’t particularly care for Ubisoft games in general these days so I’m probably a bit biased. Im not gonna finish it. The story is not compelling enough to me to grind through the rest. The rpg elements (if you can call it that) are boring. In order to get the good upgrades you have to do a fair amount of exploring and It’s just not engaging enough to continue. For what it’s worth I didn’t like Fenyx Rising either.

Sonic Superstars {} 7/10
Oh Sonic, you blue, old, crusty sonofagun. How do you manage to remain relevant in today's gaming world when the quality of your games has been so inconsistent and for so long?
It was nice of Sega to return to the series roots. Just plain ol' 2D, no voice acting (that's when the series started to go downhill to me personally, the first time Sonic opened his mouth on Dreamcast).

I feel like I say this in every Sonic game review, but I was never big into this series as a kid. I've enjoyed some of the games, but definitely didn't enjoy them as much as other kids at school seemed to. But with this having a co-op mode, and the fact it dropped down to $20 only a few months after launch, I felt I had to get it just for the co-op aspect alone, so that's what this review is based on because I don't want to play it solo.

Lemme tell ya, this game's co-op mode is nothing more than a freaking afterthought. Like, no part of this feels like it was designed with co-op in mind. It was first and foremost a single player game and somewhere down the line one of the devs say "I bet this could be fun if we let all 4 characters be on-screen at once", and they did it because it seemed to have worked for the New Super Mario Bros. series. But it's not always fun here. If you zoom too far ahead of your partner(s), they will despawn and have to respawn where the player furthest ahead is. I wish the game was playable in split-screen just to avoid that, because it's gotta make the other player(s) feel like they're not contributing much or they're just being carried through the game by the more experienced player. There's way too many bonus mini-games in the early levels too. After the first hour or so I found myself actually trying to avoid them when possible.

The game itself overall is not too difficult until you get to the final boss fight, and oh boy, don't even get me started on that son of a dog. It is so frustrating, my friend and I spent 2 hours unable to beat him until we finally just gave up for the night. We'll try again tomorrow evening, but neither of us were having fun with that boss fight after 20 minutes of failed attempts, so I'll be damned if I'm going to spend another 2 hours on it, and I took a point off the score just for that alone. Everything else about the game though, the graphics, controls, music, it's all pretty damn good. If they had just toned down that boss fight and maybe put more thought into the co-op, this could've been my all-time favorite Sonic game. There's a chance it still might be, I'll have to think about it after beating that boss.

Also there's an online battle mode. I only played a little of it, I didn't feel it was very fun, and I don't know why that mode has online support but the co-op doesn't.

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - Overall a good game that I enjoyed playing for months.

Probably too big - though I did all the shrines (my favorite), got all the sages, defeated Ganondorf; I skipped many side quests (most seemed kind of dumb and tedious to be honest -- glad they were optional). Also, The Depths were meh, hard to get around in, sparse content, and weak rewards. I covered less than 25% of the Depths.

I was worried the Zonai building would be annoying, but I generally liked it. I also liked the shrine quests where you had to bring the crystal to the shrine with a beam of light.

Overall, TotK seemed easier than BotW. Initially, I struggled with combat (would get one-shotted), but I think once I got my armor upgraded, I just button-mashed through it all easily. The dungeons also were not hard. The game is more long than hard. It was hard to stay focused on playing for weeks. I'm pretty tired of playing at this point. But, I don't regret it.

Yeah that’s my gripe with today’s big named games. They’re mostly bloated and overwhelming. I just got TOTK too and I’m dreading playing it cause once I do I’m probably not gonna finish it for a good half a year or more. Even now I’m playing Jedi Survivor and I’m almost 35 hours in and feel like I still have a long way to go before I finish it. I miss the days of 15-20 hour max games. They’re a lost art.

Concrete Genie {} 7/10
I wish I hadn't slept on this game for so long. When this was first announced I was hyped because I feel like Sony gave the impression that it was a VR game. But then my interest faded when I learned that it only contained an optional "VR Experience" mode and the actual game itself wasn't playable in VR at all. Well that optional VR mode is hardly worth busting out the VR headset for unless you desperately want to unlock 3 extra trophies (if you don't have PSVR those trophies are just optional and will not prevent you from getting the platinum if you care about that). The VR thing lasts around 15-20 minutes, and I admit it's pretty neat, I just wish there was more to it.

That little disappointment aside, I think the actual game itself is quite good. The graphics especially were nicer than I was expecting. I mean, I don't really know what I was expecting, because I don't know what kind of budget went into this, but regardless it looks nice in 4K even though there are some noticeable frame-rate dips here and there, but not enough of them to make me scale it down to 1080p. The controls work well too, and I like that it supports gyro (relax, it's optional).

Drawing/painting the Genies and having them come to life is pretty cool. I don't know if Warren Spector would agree, but I feel like there's a part of this game that I was expecting from Epic Mickey back in the day, but was executed a little better here.

The game seems to be on the short side, so I don't remember if they charged $60 for this at launch, but if they did, it wouldn't have been worth that and if that's what they released it at and this game bombed, that could be why.

Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs {2} 7/10

There's only one way to get me to play Angry freakin' Birds in 2024, and that's if you add VR to it. And add VR to it they did. It has been about 12 years since I've last played an Angry Birds game on my old tablet. I remember playing it quite a bit...for like a month, and then I got so tired of it that I never went back. While it is entirely possible that could happen here too, I've been enjoying this while it lasts. I won't be playing it as often as I did on my tablet back in the day, but that's not because of the quality of the game, it's more to do with the hassle of always having to bust out the VR headset whenever I feel like playing.

So...it's Angry Birds. You knock crap down using birds, some with special abilities. Not much has changed other than it being in VR now, so you likely already know what to expect from it and whether or not you'd like it. The graphics are nice and colorful, though still look pretty basic overall. Some of the music is catchy, but honestly most of the time I felt like I barely noticed any bgm while I'm trying to think of what move to make next. Controls for the most part are fine, but there were some rare times where the slingshot I was holding seemed to not be moving in the way it should've been. But it wasn't happening often, so it did not affect my overall enjoyment.

I'm enjoying the game, but I wish there was more to it. At least in the beginning it does what any good puzzle game should do, and that's make you want to replay levels over and over again to try and get a 3 star rating if you didn't the first time. If it wasn't for that, I'd say it would be entirely possible to just breeze through the game within two or three days. However I've now reached the point where I'll just be content with 1 or 2 stars and am ready to just get through the game, which I'll probably be finished with within the next couple of hours.

Another aspect where the game offers replay value is that you can create and share custom made levels, and I believe the levels are pooled together between PlayStation VR and Quest users. I have zero interest in making my own levels, but I like that it's there. I went browsing through the community uploads and there is still stuff being uploaded by the community, but I don't know how often people are playing them. For example, I sorted by upload date and there were levels uploaded from a few hours ago up until 3 days ago that nobody had played before me. But then there are other uploaded levels with over a million plays and even more with tens of thousands of plays. Unfortunately there is a lot of junk levels too, like, there were too damn many where the level starts and you begin looking around trying to assess the situation and figure out the best way to tackle the stage, but then something triggers an explosion and before you know it the level has completed itself without you even doing anything. I chalk that up to children just experimenting with the physics rather than caring about making a fun level. Just use the filter to sort by the highest rated levels and you'll be fine, because there are some good ones worth playing once you've finished the main ones in the campaign, because the campaign just by itself won't last you very long. I think I paid $10 for this on sale and I feel like I got my money's worth out of it.

Injustice 2 legendary edition - 7/10 - via portal

Knocked this one out from the back log. I enjoyed the cinematics. I went with Batman ending; kinda cheesy. Head and shoulders above the first game. It gets a little redundant in the later levels. Lots of unlockable goodness.

KarmaZoo {} 8/10
This is a pretty cool little 2D platformer that is based entirely on co-op. You play with 10 random players online or setup a private lobby for friends only (I wish you could mix and match friends and randoms but the last time I played it wasn't possible) and the goal is to help each other. Sometimes that includes dying on purpose, for example jumping into a floor of spikes so when you die it leaves behind a little tombstone that your teammates can use to jump across safely. There are a bunch of characters to play as and each has their own unique ability. If you try running off to do your own thing (like I am sometimes guilty of in co-op games) you will be punished for it if you go too far away from the rest of the team. I don't know how many levels there are in total or if there are an infinite amount and are just randomly generated (because a bunch do look similar) but you basically just have to survive a loop that is 4 levels long and keep repeating to rack up karma points to spend on unlockables.

This has cross-platform multiplayer which is great, I'm playing on PS5 and my friend prefers Switch so I bought it for her on there. It's only $10 (but free on PS+ Extra) so if you're a sucker for co-op games like me, you should consider giving this one a chance.
-=-

Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas {} 6/10
I bought this back in 2018 and finally started it. I've only put around 3 hours into it, so this is more like a first impression.
I know this game got a lot of praise back in 2013 for being a pretty decent Zelda clone for mobile devices, probably the closest you could get to Zelda on your phone or tablet at the time without installing an emulator and playing an actual Zelda game that way. However, when you port the game to consoles where there is no shortage of good Zelda clones, especially a Nintendo console that gives you access to legit Zelda games, expectations are going to be a little different. So far the puzzles are pretty basic stuff, like pushing blocks. And pushing is all you do, you can't pull them. Of course early on you get bombs so you can blow your way through hidden walls. The gameplay itself is like a mix between 2D and 3D Zeldas. I've read they went full 3D in the sequel, but in this one you don't get control over the camera. You sail a ship around to different islands like Wind Waker, but I've only gotten to visit 3 or 4 so far and haven't gotten to do everything there is to do on them. Anyway, I don't expect it to be a long game, but the minute I start feeling bored of it, I'm moving on to something else.

Among Us VR {2} 8/10
I enjoyed Among Us a few years back for a couple weeks during the pandemic before I lost interest in it and moved on. I expect the same might happen here, but for only $9.99 even a couple weeks of enjoyment at that price is worth it (I've been bored of full priced games in less time than that).

First off, unless you have a group of friends to play with that you already know, be prepared to play with noisy kids, because in my experience pre-teens playing on their Quest VR are the only ones keeping this game relevant. I can count on one hand the number of times I've come across a fellow PSVR2 player in the same lobby as me. This game helps to justify my decision to not give money to any developer who makes a PSVR2 game with a heavy emphasis on online multiplayer but doesn't include crossplay. The combined playerbase of VR headset users is already small-ish as it is, but PSVR2 by far has the smallest amount of players of them all, combined with the fact that not everyone who owns a PSVR2 will be willing to pay for PS+ to play online in the first place, so that makes the potential playerbase even smaller. So even though it might mean you'll have to tolerate some noisy Quest kids in certain games, kudos to these devs and every other dev who puts crossplay in their games, as PSVR2 online games would be dead without it because nobody is buying the damn thing. Sad, but true.

With that said, this is Among Us, which you no doubt already know about, but it's in VR now which automatically makes it more fun. I'm having fun while it lasts, in fact while it might be too early to say this since I've only been playing less than a week, but as of right now I'd rank it up there among the most fun I've had playing a VR game. Top 5 for sure. But man the kids really can be annoying at times. Like, I get it, I was a kid too, but I don't think I used as much foul language in a month as they do in one 10 minute round of this game. But as seemingly the sole adult playing (because nobody else I know has VR) in every match, it makes me want to mute them, but then you can't because the purpose of the game is working together and communication. I'm always "the quiet one" (in real life too), and I don't like to use voice chat in online games with randoms, so when someone finds another player's corpse and nobody was around to witness who did it, it's easy to point fingers at "the quiet one" since I'm not going to argue my innocence with a bunch of freakin' kids, so I just take one for the team and let them vote me off and be done with it even if I wasn't the imposter, and it's funny how quickly they'll all gang up.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

Annnnnd I'm out lol

DCGX wrote:

If if it were all psvr2 players, you probably want to play with a group of friends anyway rather than randos. You would get a lot more out of it.

Social deduction style games really benefit from knowing the people you are playing with

Robocop: Rogue City (PS5) - 7.5/10 - If you were a child of the 80's then this is pretty dang good, but otherwise it's just a decent AA title. The story moves super slowly, cutscenes lack energy and have lethargic pacing, and character interactions in general are meh. The voicework is acceptable but not great either, and there are some really mundane tasks and side missions that feel odd.

The standard linear levels are a blast though. It nails the atmosphere, looks rather good, and the default pistol is an absolute joy. Somewhat destructible environments and constant debris really help sell the power of the weapons and it's been quite enjoyable so far.

Suicide Squad : Kill The Past. Let it Die. Live Service Is Your Future - Spalding Gray of Crap/10

https://youtu.be/HR4N9JoRHN0?si=IQvSrGtU6AaAOZNR

DCGX wrote:


Yeah, it can get so bad at times. Apparently on Quest, people are using a soundboard app to blast pre-recorded sound effects/voice clips or in one case the other day some idiot was running around following random players just blasting "Baby" by Justin Bieber. And in another round some kid was playing in the same room as his crying baby sister, and his mic was picking up every bit of it and I don't know if he even realized we all could hear it.

Drums Rock {2} 7/10
This was one of the earlier PSVR2 games I bought when I got the headset back in January, and I've kept it installed since then because it is fun to come back to every couple of weeks.
So what you get by default when buying the game are a few cheap cover versions of classic songs like I Love Rock & Roll, Black Betty and Bring Me To Life (to name a few). Honestly it isn't too bad, because you're more focused on keeping up with the rhythm of the song rather than listening to the vocalist who sounds nowhere near as good as the the original singer. Beyond that, there are a bunch of original songs made just for the game and some of them are good, others you'll have forgotten about by the time you turn the game off. There are some DLC packs out now with more on the way, and I've been thinking about buying them even though they feature bands I don't give a rat's ass about (Green Day and Simple Plan for example) and there's a DLC pack with music from the game Undertale which I've never played and don't know what the music sounds like, but it could be fun.
However, the Quest version allows you to use custom music, so if you have a choice between buying the game on either headset then that's the version I would recommend buying just for that feature alone. But even without the feature on PSVR2 I am enjoying the game, though I haven't been able to graduate to anything higher than easy difficulty, but that doesn't bother me too much because back in the days of Guitar Hero I could barely last on medium. My reflexes ain't what they used to be.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

Brings back (bad) memories from the early days of Xbox Live.

Trip World DX - 7/10

I knew nothing about this game prior to Limited Run Games announcing a new color version of the 1992 original Game Boy release last year, with a Game Boy Color cartridge release. Many people say it's like Kirby, so in honor of my sister and her love for the Game Boy and especially Kirby, I bought a copy which finally arrived yesterday.

Yes, in a way it is like Kirby. The player-character Yakopoo can transform at times and use different abilities, but it's also an easy game like many Kirby titles. Often "enemies" bounce right off Yakopoo or can be avoided. There are some blind jumps, but they don't feel cheap. The colorization is done very well. Once the character patterns are learned and the bosses figured out, this is a quick game to complete. I haven't beat it yet, but I did play a while. There's also a sound test and stage select.

If not for my sister's probably interest, I wouldn't have thought twice about 'Trip World DX,' but it's a solid early 90s platformer. The physical release is really nice. The box fits into the GB collection, the manual is substantial, and the cartridge is really cool and solid. I don't regret purchasing the physical GBC version, but I wouldn't spend more than a couple of dollars on the digital modern releases.

Prince of Persia The Lost Crown is quite the scrumptious dish. 8.5/10 so far and I’m a few hours in.

Pistol Whip {2} 8/10

Damn, this game gets intense. I regret not starting this in winter, because you can't play this and not break a sweat. And it's sometimes already hard enough to not break a sweat playing VR in Spring and Summer weather without cranking the AC, even for games that keep you half as active as this one. You are constantly dodging enemy bullets and having to duck under obstacles, and as you're doing this you've got EDM music blasting in your ears. I guess you could say the game is almost like a combination of fellow VR game Superhot and Metal: Hellsinger (which is about to become a VR game in a couple months).

You can go along and play this like a generic on-rails first-person shooter, which I admit is how I was playing it at the beginning and kind of not enjoying it as much, but that's not the point of the game. How you're supposed to play (especially if you care about ranking on the leaderboard) is by racking up combos by shooting these bad guys to the beat of the music. The soundtrack fits the game well, though EDM isn't something I'd listen to outside of this game. The 3D audio in general is really good. I had recorded a play session of the game and when watching it back I could hear each enemy bullet whizzing past me, but when actually playing the game I didn't notice that so much because I'm so concentrated on the music.

I bought this a few years back on the original PlayStation VR but never got around to playing it. Once I saw it offered a free upgrade to PSVR2 version I figured there's no reason not to play that version instead. From my understanding when the game originally released it was kinda barebones with 10 songs and no type of campaign mode at all. Over time they raised the price by $5 while adding more free content for existing owners. I don't know exactly how much extra content was added, but from what I've read it seems to be a fairly significant amount. While I haven't played it on the other headsets to compare it directly, I think I'd have to say the experience is probably best on PSVR2 due to the crazy haptic feedback features, they really add a lot with a game like this. Either way, regardless of what headset you play it on, it's a good workout.

Galaxy Kart {2} 6/10

People crapped on this game when it first released last year, with many crowning it as one of the worst games in the initial PlayStation VR2 launch month period. I didn't play the game back then due to not owning a PSVR2, but after looking into the game after I had got my PSVR2 this past January, all I'd heard about was how much the developers had improved it over the past year and that it's now in the state they wish they had released it in. But alas, the damage had already been done. When you search for the game on YouTube the first results you're likely to see are the negative reviews. I'm on a VR Discord server that the devs are also on, they've reached out to a couple of the YouTube Channels that gave it a negative review last year and asked if they'd be willing to give it a second chance, and only one seems interested in doing so, but he keeps putting it off, the other reviewers won't budge. The devs also added a 30 minute free trial of the game to the PS+ Premium tier hoping that it would boost sales, but they've only seen sales drop since doing that and that places the devs in a spot where they aren't making money on it anymore. They want to get this out on Quest but for whatever reason can't get it approved yet. Anyway, just giving that little backstory, I'm not here to throw a pity party for the devs because they shouldn't have released the game in the state that they did.

So this released last year initially with only 4 tracks to race on, which is mind boggling to me anyone would release a kart racer with that pitiful amount in 2023 when the OG Super Mario Kart had 20 tracks, 30 years prior. The game is up to 18 courses now, which is a lot more than 4, but still a little on the low side, though since the game is only $20 I'll let it slide and because the track designs aren't bad. There's 6 player online multiplayer...but it's kinda broken. You have to search for a lobby at the right time, you can't join a lobby with a race already in progress and just spectate until they're finished like with Mario Kart 8 (I think the devs are working on that though). Plus without cross-play and the game not being on Quest, don't expect there to be many players online anyway unless you hop on Discord and hope you can wrangle enough other players together that also want to play at that time. Because of that I have still not gotten to play a single online race because it never finds anyone when I search and I'm too lazy to jump through the extra hoops of finding people on Discord. And since it's VR, don't expect local split-screen multiplayer to be an option (it rarely is with VR games). So that just leaves you against the CPU, which is hardly fun in any other kart racer either, especially with the rubber-banding they do in this game. I do not call myself a top tier Mario Kart player, though I'd say I'm "decent" at it at least, from all the hours I've spent playing the series (and genre as a whole) since the original release. I should not be finishing last place in this game on the easy setting. Maybe that's why people are playing the 30 minute free trial and then not buying the game afterwards, because it makes you play on easy difficulty first, and if people feel like the CPU is cheating even on easy, they might feel like they won't stand a chance on the harder difficulty settings.

As it is now, this is the only option for kart racing on the PSVR2, so I try to be a little more forgiving. The graphics are not bad. I've heard it had a poor frame-rate at launch, but from what I've played that isn't the case anymore. The audio is alright, nothing really memorable though, you won't be humming these tunes when you're not playing, though I can't remember the last game soundtrack to leave a memorable impression on me. Loading times are quick, in fact I can't recall seeing a single loading screen. I select a course, then my driver and kart, and then the screen fades to black for 2 or 3 seconds and then the race is beginning. The controls I have mixed feelings about. A lot of people are saying the best way to play is with a steering wheel. I don't have one of those, and since GT7 is the only significant racing game on VR2, I feel like only a small portion of VR2 owners might have one. Without one, just using the VR2 Sense Controllers took a little getting used to. You steer by using the steering wheel, and I don't mean by using the analog sticks, but by gripping the wheel with both hands and steering it, kinda like playing Mario Kart Wii with tilt controls using that plastic wheel controller shell (or, y'know, how you'd steer an actual car). Then when needed you reach over with your one hand and grab the item you've gotten from one of the item boxes scattered around the course, but they don't really explain how to use the items. I've figured out that some are meant to be thrown, but after I got 5 or 6 races deep I just decided screw it, I'm just going to race and not even use the freakin' items.

As for where the game is still lacking, I dislike that when I finish a race I'm stuck waiting for all CPU racers to finish too before I can go to the next race. To unlock extra characters and their karts, you have to play certain tracks on a certain difficulty and win, but the problem is you'll be doing it multiple times because you can't just start from the hardest difficulty, the game makes you win on easy and then normal and then again on hard on each damn course (and like I mentioned before, the rubber-band AI can put up a fight even on the easiest setting). Also, each "cup" in the game I think only lasts 3 courses each, and when you win the 3rd one there's no celebration ceremony or anything, you're just kicked to the main menu, no congratulations or anything like that.
So the game is $20 but I paid $10 on sale, and so it's hard to be too disappointed in something I paid so little for, but even still at only $10 it just slightly fails to meet expectations. If you're a kart racing whore like myself, maybe get it on the next sale and only if you're okay with the possibility of never finding people to race against online so it's just gonna be against the CPU, but I can't recommend it at full price. The game seems to have a small-ish following, but I honestly just think it's because this is our only kart racing option and the minute a better one releases they will forget about this one.


Edit: I need to clear up a couple of things now that I just put another 45 minute session into this. First is that you actually can steer with the analog stick (you still have to grip the wheel with at least one hand, though). Sure, it kinda breaks the immersion in a VR game, but I still prefer this way. Second is the loading times and I said "I select a course, then my driver and kart, and then the screen fades to black for 2 or 3 seconds and then the race is beginning." but it's not even 2 or 3 seconds that the screen fades to black, it's barely 1 second, enough to say there are no loading times at all. Still, I feel like I've gotten all I can from this game.

Sounds like the devs have a long way to go with this game still, and I'm guessing that's why no one wants to re-review it.

Spincraft

8/10

Fun game. It's a rogue style game, sort of slot machine style based. Each turn you "spin" and an assortment of your currently collected items for that round show up, and you get different amounts of coins for each one. The coins increase depending on the synergies of the items. If you get bee near a flower, you get more; rain near a flower gives more, a bowling ball near a pin, etc. That's simplifying it, but you get the idea.

There are items that will increase your luck, making it easier to get rarer more powerful items.

There are items that will let you remove from your current item collection (sometimes less is more, you know?)

There are items that will let you respin.

And there are items on the side that have effects, such as for x amount of item y, something happens; if Y happens, then Z occurs, etc.

It's a good game so far. Some runs I've gotten pretty far, some not so much.

Simple fun.

Thanks for the suggestion @Simon_Belmont

Super Death Game SHOW! VR {2} 4/10

I know I bought this on sale a couple of months ago, but I don't remember what I paid for it. Now that I have played it, I'm gonna say that whatever amount I had paid, it was probably more than this game is worth. I'd like to think I am a little wiser with my PSVR2 purchases now, but this one I really did no research on ahead of time, I was just trying to build up a library and buying almost anything when it went on sale.

This is set up like a game show (obviously), kind of like the type of game show you might expect to see in the movie SAW. You start in a room, a voice explains what is happening and that you're in a game show and there are viewers watching and commenting as you are going through all of this, and you have to complete 10 mini-games to win your prize of millions of "Yen-Dollars". Failure to complete the 10 mini-games results in...your death. On my first attempt I completed 3 mini-games before I ran out of time and died. It was on the second attempt that I managed to complete all 10 and it only took me just under 15 minutes. I don't think it would take more than an afternoon of playing to see all that this game has to offer, if you can stand to play it that long.

There are a variety of mini-games (though not as many as something like Mario Party) and they start off easy, I think you have to play more to unlock harder versions. I haven't played them all yet, but I'll give a few examples:
- One mini-game where you have to stack different shaped blocks
- Another mini-game has a dude kicking a soccer ball at you 10 times and you have to block at least 5 of them from making it into the goal behind you
- There was one called "chick sexing" which sadly was not at all what I hoped it would be, it was you having to tell apart the genders of little baby chickens
- There's one where a laundry dryer machine drops from the ceiling and there's a secret message in it telling you what item to put inside it, but you can just throw random items until you get the correct one.

Despite the game show taking place in a fairly big room, you don't get to move around in it. You can turn left and right, but you'll be standing in one spot the whole time, and it's always the same room over and over. This seems to have been done by design, because they wanted this to be a game you show off to your friends and family that haven't played VR before and they wanted no risk of motion sickness. And for a mini-game collection, the lack of any kind of multiplayer is disappointing and kind of limits the replay value even further than there not being many mini-games to begin with.

Immortals of Aveum (PS5) - 6.5/10 - It's...fine. Being one of the first games to use Unreal Engine 5 on the consoles makes this appear to be more than it really is. It's a AA game but with a (literally) shiny coat of paint. There are moment where things look fantastic but overall it's a mediocre game.

There are no Quality/Performance visual options, the shooting gameplay is ok but nothing noteworthy, and many button combos get messy during chaotic battles. The button to recharge your powers is the same one to open doors, open chests, activate portals, and also talk to people. So I often burn a powerup on accident just trying to advance.

Speaking of, the story tries to do too much and the characters I was most interested in often weren't where the story went. Everyone feels so stiff and uninteresting and although you can fast travel to backtrack for goodies, I never did as I just want to get to the end.

I'm playing this on PS+ and it's great for that. I've had trouble putting it down but it's good, not great.

Affected: The Manor - Complete Edition {2} 7/10

It's kinda hard to rate this one. If you're like me and horror games are what got you into this wacky world of VR to begin with, you might enjoy this. The problem is, there really isn't much to it.
You'll spend about an hour walking through this haunted house loaded with jump scares. Unfortunately, that's it. There's no puzzles to solve or anything like that, it's only jump scares, and the jump scares are all scripted and once you've been through it you'll know where they all happen and when to expect them and they have no effect anymore. But that first playthrough though, it was good. Just know that this is a port of a PSVR1 game from like 5 or 6 years ago, so it in no way takes advantage of any of the PSVR2 features (no eye-tracking, no controller haptics, and now that I think about it, I don't recall any rumble being used either).

This is definitely something to show off to friends and family, especially if you know they don't like horror stuff, because they are the ones who give the best reactions. There's two main ways to get through the house, and both are fairly short (20-ish minutes each) but feel longer than they are due to the slow walking speed. Each way has a split path towards the end, so you'll want to play through at least 4 times to have seen everything, which will take around an hour.

Any additional replay value comes from the Gauntlet Mode where you race through the house, the goal is to do it in under 2m30s for a trophy, but my best time was 2m46s before I gave up. In this mode the general layout is the same, except some parts are randomized so you can't just rush your way through it the exact same way every time. You hold the left analog stick to move and the longer you hold it without bumping into anything (like mostly furniture that moves on its own to startle you) the faster you will go, but if you bump into something you're back to moving at a snail's pace. This mode is interesting in that it not only judges you based on how fast you get through it, but also by how many gasps or screams the microphone detects you doing. I feel like more horror games need to utilize the dang microphone.
So, yeah, I slap a 7 outta 10 on this because it's good for that hour. Anything more than that you'll want to dock a point off the score for each extra playthrough. If this were a flat game it'd be a hard pass, but being in VR makes all the difference.

Bugsnax {} 7/10

I've had this downloaded on my PS5 within the first couple days of me getting it almost 2 years ago, decided I'd finally give it a chance. I went in with low expectations, I'm not even sure why. Not because it looks like a children's game (so does Animal Crossing and I'm a big fan of that series for over 20 years now), but it exceeded my expectations definitely. Not enough that I want to go for the platinum trophy or hunt down every last bug or anything like that, but I'm enjoying the goofy story they came up with. Sure, hunting down some of these bugs feels like a chore sometimes because you have to remember what area of the map they're in, but sometimes it's fun figuring out how you have to catch them. Gameplay-wise it is fun but fairly simple.

Also I want to give a shout out to the PS5's Game Hints feature. I was looking for one particular bug, I had left my phone in another room and was too lazy to go get it and and look on Google where this bug was, so I used the Game Hints feature on the PS5 and damn it was really helpful. I had never bothered to use that feature before.

Bugsnax is a 10/10 game.

Bunger bunger bunger.

7/10 is 5 more than I would've given that crap. Best part might have been the Bunger Bunger Bunger line.

Also couldn’t get into Bugsnax but glad some folks can.

Hoyle Card Games

Not as good as any of the PC versions, including the original from 1989.

Part of what makes the PC versions fun is the banter and reactions from your opponents (characters from other Sierra games in the first few releases, then a cast of original characters in the later iterations). The GBC version has a few characters, but they never say anything. They are just portraits.

The programming isn't the greatest - you don't have any gameplay options to adjust. For example in Cribbage, the CPU always starts as the dealer in each game (if you are one of the cool people who plays cribbage, you probably know this is a statistically significant advantage).

Still, it does do something I didn't expect at all... single system 2-person multiplayer. Yes it's a little clunky to pass the system back and forth but still kind of neat that they implemented it at all (they also have link function which I figured would be all the effort they put into it).

As far as GBC games go it's pretty average. I think GBC may have the worst library of any Nintendo system, though, so make of that what you will. It gets slight plus points for the single system multiplayer. I think I would give it a C minus.

Crisis VRigade 2 {2} 7/10

I'm kinda torn on that score. I think I'll settle on a 7, though I'd like to score it a point higher because of how much fun it can be, but then I also could dock it a point for how little content there is here, thus affecting its replay value.
So what this game was aiming to be was like the popular arcade light-gun shooters of the 90s like Virtua Cop for example, but in VR. It succeeds there, because it's fun just like those games were, but due to them being arcade games there wasn't a whole lot of content to them, and that applies here too.

You play as a cop and blast your way through levels ducking behind cover when needed (and you will have to physically crouch too to really be protected behind the object, so that makes me glad I played this on PSVR2 and not the original PSVR where the camera might lose track of me if I crouch too low). From what I can tell there are 9 levels in the game, each kind of a parody of popular movies. Three levels are part of the "Story Mode", except I couldn't really tell you what this game's story was about because I don't feel like the levels were linked together by a story, and story was never important in these types of arcade games anyway. In the three story mode levels you have 7 minutes to make your way through each level, and when you kill all enemies in an area there are usually two paths you can pick to go next, so I guess that adds just a little bit of replayability, even though they all take you to the same place. Then there is a Time Attack mode with three more stages, albeit they're shorter because this time you get 30 seconds to kill all enemies in the area, though scoring kills adds time to the clock. Then there is challenge mode, but these levels are locked until you complete certain challenges in the previous levels (example: score X amount of headshots and complete one of the story levels on Veteran difficulty). Among some of the movies the game tries to parody are Scarface, The Matrix, Terminator and World War Z.

There's a two player online co-op mode, though I haven't gotten to try it yet because nobody was playing when I had searched and I don't know if it supports crossplay or not. Like I said, the game is fun, but if you're the type like me who usually doesn't bother replaying games much or going for 100% and you're just fine with playing through each level once, then you can expect to be done with this in two hours or less, so for that reason I could only recommend this on a sale.

Alvo {2} 7/10
I decided when I got PlayStation VR2 that I would do something that I never really bothered with on the original PSVR and that is to buy an online shooter and actually invest some time into it, because multiplayer shooters is one genre I had moved away from over the years because I just stopped enjoying them, even something as simple as Splatoon feels impossible for me to enjoy anymore. I don't know what it is that made me decide to go with this as my first real VR online first-person shooter (I've played others on PSVR, but either only offline against bots or just a few matches online before I moved on), but I'm pretty happy with my choice.

This is a 5v5 online team based first-person shooter (also a 10 player free-for-all mode which is what I play 90% of the time, because I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel.) Something to know before you go into this game is that there is no single player campaign or anything, the sole purpose of buying this is for the online multiplayer, so make sure you have PlayStation+ or you'll be stuck playing against bots, and that's never fun.

Graphically, it's not gonna blow you away. I watched some comparison videos and it looks sharper than the original PSVR and Quest versions, but if you've played something like Horizon or Resident Evil 4/8 or Gran Turismo 7, all built with PSVR2 in mind, this can't compete with those. This game was originally shown in a CGI trailer for the original PlayStation VR back in 2017 and after multiple delays (and temporary cancelation due to lack of funds) finally released in 2021, so it's definitely a last-gen game by a small team. It's a little disappointing that you can't interact with objects around the environment, and if you shoot a toaster on a kitchen counter for example, it gets what I describe as "bullet_hole.jpg" effect on it, iykyk. Of course you shouldn't be wasting bullets on shooting toasters, but this is VR, make it shootable for the sake of immersion, brah.
Audio is good, but nothing special. Player voices come in loud and clear (sometimes a little too loud, especially PSVR2 players, the mic is so sensitive you can hear the other players breathe, something I also notice in Among Us and it's how everyone knows when a PSVR2 player joined the lobby), but footsteps in game you don't hear much of because so many players use the ninja perk once they unlock it. The gun sound effects also are kinda lackluster. But I do like when someone calls in attack dogs, you can usually hear the dogs in the distance and you know it's time to run and hide. Speaking of the attack dogs, the game has the killstreak rewards of Modern Warfare (the real one; Call Of Duty 4). Get 3 kills in a row and you can get a health boost, get 5 kills in a row you can call in a remote control car that drives to the nearest enemy and explodes, get 7 kills and you can call in attack dogs or setup a turret (I always preferred the 3/5/7 killstreak from that game, sucks they messed with it in the later games). I don't remember if this was the case in CoD 4 as well, but once you reach the 7th kill and call in the dogs or turret, there's nowhere to go from there until you die and restart the streak. At one point I had joined a lobby and there was one other player who left right away, so I was stuck in a room full of bots where I proceeded to wrack up a killstreak that went 26 kills deep, but after the 7th kill there was no reason not to just die and start from 0 again. Also from what I can tell, you're eventually just going to die anyway because as far as I can tell you don't get more ammo for your guns until you die and respawn. Maybe there is a way and I just haven't figured it out yet, but also you don't seem to be able to pick up guns of dead enemies either.

Controls are good for the most part. It took me a little while to get used to reloading an imaginary gun as if it was an actual gun (swapping magazine clips) instead of just tapping a reload button like I would in a flat game, but they do give the option so you can assign it to a button press and I think I'm going to do just that to make things easier. I played most of Resident Evil 4 in VR that way too because it saves time.

Now gameplay-wise it feels like probably the closest we'll get to a VR version of Call Of Duty anytime soon (it even has a co-op zombies mode, though I haven't messed with it), and I'm glad it plays more like that than something more like SOCOM or Rainbow 6. One nice difference between this and Call Of Duty, the playerbase is by far less toxic. Granted I'm only around 10 hours into it so far, but almost every lobby I've been in has people joking and laughing with each other, each day I've played there's at least one lobby with people making jokes about my gamertag when they see it. I've not heard one insult get thrown when someone gets killed by another player except for one kid who sounded about 14 and hadn't played the game before and was getting torn up by the people who definitely had played before, was a bit of a Negative Nancy when he'd get killed in-game and would tell the rest of the lobby full of adults that we're too old to be playing this game. But nobody took offense to it and some of them were even joking back that he needs to take a sip from his juice box and calm down. There are teens and older adults playing from different countries (judging by their accents), no vitriol besides that one kid, mostly just laughter. This is how gaming is supposed to be dammit, and is the total opposite of the kind of crap I hear when playing Call of Duty or [insert nearly any other flavor of the week shooting game here]. The best part is it supports crossplay with Quest and the original PSVR and unlike Among Us VR I am not consistently the only PSVR2 player in a lobby, there's usually at least 2 or 3 others.

The game loads very quickly. No matter what mode you pick, it thrusts you into a match. If there are not enough other players they will shove some bots in the round but they'll be replaced as more people join. However, there is a lot of grinding needed to get the better guns and perks, and for now I'm still stuck with the basic guns you get from the start which means I'm constantly getting my ass kicked by the better players. Still, I'm having fun playing this even with losing consistently, and it has earned itself a spot alongside Drums Rock and Among Us, as now three PSVR2 games that I'll keep installed indefinitely because they are perfect pick-up-and-play games whenever you're feeling in the mood.

Suicide Squad:KTJL (XSX) - 6/10 - This isn't the disaster I had read about. It has some good bits but is overall not that fun. The actual gameplay offers some variety between characters, and the traversal and gunplay works ok. But after a bit of time, it all just feels like padding. The core campaign feels like padding...not a good sign. I like the graphics and am interested in seeing how this plays out, but just standing on a rooftop and seeing new enemies spawn in nearby all the time just feels like a slog. I think "I'll clear the streets" but then new things just pop in and it feels like a waste of time.

The controls are a little convoluted too and I've had trouble when switching characters. Plus the screen has so much stuff on it that I struggle to know where to look sometimes.

I think the core game is fine, but the live service focus and insane grinding sucks all the fun out. I went with my son to the library and checked this out for a week so at least it was free. But I can't imagine I'll play it more than a couple hours.

Remember Me {} 8/10
I dig this game and am glad I got to play this because it's a game not that many people seem to talk about or remember (pun intended) due to it getting overshadowed by launching too close to TLoU. Had I not gotten this in a Humble Bundle back in 2015 I would have never seeked out to play it on my own, I'm sure of that, because even after getting it in that bundle it still took me 9 years to finally play it.

Gameplay-wise I didn't know what to expect out of this before I started playing, but it's a sci-fi action game with lots of beating up enemies with combos that you can customize. I thought this would be an open-world game, but it isn't, it's more linear than I expected.

Graphically, with the settings maxed out it looks pretty nice, though it wouldn't be that hard to believe that it's originally from late in the PS360 era. But still, that console gen pumped out some damn nice looking games back in the day that still look surisingly good today. Gears Of War for example still looks pretty good especially considering it was released almost 20 years ago (sorry if that makes you feel old). I like the looks of this futuristic France setting, though as I said above due to how linear the game is you won't get much chance to explore it other than what they want you to see of it.

If there's one thing DONTNOD Entertainment knows how to do, it's tell a story in their games. A lot of people don't give games credit as far as we've really reached the point where they can tell just as good of a story as movies or books (though games is the one artform where your skill level may hamper your ability to truly enjoy the story), and I get it because a lot of times I'm not playing a game for the story either, but I can still appreciate the effort the writing team put into coming up with the story, like in BioShock or now Remember Me. The story had my interest in the beginning even though it opens with the whole amnesia trope, and I liked the whole gimmick where you can steal and alter memories from other people, but over time I felt like there was starting to become too many threads to keep track of for someone like me who is almost never just playing one game at a time. Anyway, I plan to stick with this one to the end and I'm a little over the halfway mark now.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

I enjoyed that game quite a bit. It would be great to see a sequel

Trepang2

7.5/10

One part F.E.A.R. One part Doom. All parts old school 360/PS3 era solid FPS fun with some annoyances here and there like dumb AI enemies that only know how to chuck grenades at you to aggravate you and a little unbalanced difficulty here and there. I’m on the 3rd of about 11 chapters now and having a decent enough time.

I beat Trepang^2 via Luna in March I think, agree with your take @TalonJedi87 - it was decently fun and looked great, but some of the effects got too noisy to know WTH was going on. The difficulty spikes weren't fun and in a later level they got worse. Luna won't show me how long it took me, but there wasn't a lot of levels in the version I played - I didn't do the optional side missions in part b/c I was time limited on Luna, but also I didn't generally like the game to play optionally more of it.

I’m with you 100% there in regards to not even engaging on any of the side missions as after the first main mission or two I felt I’ve seen all it has to offer and just wanted to reach the end. I have 2 missions left in the main campaign I think. The missions are so long too like over an hour each. It does some good things though like remind us how cool those FEAR games were but without a compelling narrative to back up the gameplay, it just comes across as bland and kinda dull even with the high octane chaotic fast paced combat. Trepang2 also wants you to uncover the story I feel by picking up intel within each mission and I started to look for intel until it got too overwhelming and I just stopped caring after a while and decided to just get on with it.

Slogging through Metro Exodus on
Not sure how this game got such high marks. It’s kind of boring and uninspired. My favorite parts are when you just have to sit there as the minutes pass by listening to your group just talk away. Good grief, I don’t know what I expected but it was for more than this. I didn’t play the original metros so maybe that’s the problem. I stopped listening to the story hours ago.

I laways got bored pretty quick with the Metro games..... Dunno why

Dead Cells- I’ve finished it with 3 boss cells. Working on the rest of the trophies. This is a pretty simple (but difficult) metroidvania with roguelike. It’s ridiculously difficult. There is a big emphasis on DPS over damage mitigation so it requires you to not get hit at higher levels- and try to kill them before they get you. It’s pretty fun and I dabbled with it at launch- but I don’t think it’s as good as its reputation would have you believe. There are frustratingly difficult areas and some sadistic mechanics- like the curses that mean one hit death unless you kill x number of enemies (this can be as high as 100- which pretty much equates to a flawless run thereafter!) progress can be frustratingly slow - as a few permanent upgrades require multiple playthroughs- and wins (beating the last boss) to even access. Weapons are pretty ho hum and some of the ranged are OP- until higher levels when almost every mob can teleport right to your face- then you’re kinda forced to change to a more melee heavy tactic.

It’s got really good music and the castlevania crossover is pretty nice.

7/10

loztdogs wrote:

Metro Exodus kinda stunk. I liked the first two games much more when they weren’t trying to be open world. Exodus was kinda dull and uneventful I felt. Even the “climactic” ending sections felt kind of lackluster. I’ll never forget I reviewed it when I had my YouTube channel active a few years back and said it wasn’t sure what it wanted to be. Here’s a link below if you want to check it out, but yeah it left much to be desired.

https://youtu.be/XDswjBCATa4?si=0A_FgyUumz3Ahqq-

Kommie wrote:

I was reading reviews that said something to the tune of - best shooter out there.

Huh? I’m obviously playing a completely different game.

TalonJedi87 wrote:

Thanks for the link! I’ll definitely watch it.

Thanks! And I wish making YT video reviews wasn't so time consuming or I'd still make them today.

I enjoyed the first 2 Metros, though they weren't anything amazing. I tried Exodus when it was on GP a long while back and liked how it looked, but it left GP so I ended up buying it later, it's been installed on my console for like a year+ but I haven't gone back to it, I should even though I know it's not fantastic.

As for Dead Cells, I really liked that game but it is tough and I only managed to beat it with 1 Boss Cell and didn't even try I don't think with 2. I found that I'm too aggressive in that game (and others, thus why I tend to suck at souls-likes) and would take damage too often to really even bother with the lower health recovery type of runs with more Boss Cells. I did play it a ton and unlocked all of weapons that I found/were offered to non-Boss Cell runs. If you don't like DC, then don't even bother with Have a Nice Death. I've been playing that a bit and like the art style, the feel and jokes about office work, but it's not easy for how I play and you're super weak and have even less opportunities for recovering any lost health. Both games are meant to force you to play a good bit and level up before making much progress, but for me DC was good and I invested many hours, but HaND isn't and after only a handful -heh- of runs I've effectively given up on it and don't think I'll return.

I've been playing Evil West instead and have a love/hate view on that. Love the art direction, the enemy designs and variety, the feel of the game and like other aspects (story, voice work, etc.), but I don't love the combat - it's a bit like a cross of a third person shooter with an action game (almost souls-like with some of the combat, but not really) and I am 12 missions in and still die at least once, if not more against every boss or end-level type encounter and even in some more 'basic' ones during the level. I started to get better with the mechanics after they finally give you a grenade type weapon. Fighting vampires and other beasts in that realm with a pistol and rifle means you're taking the tiniest amount of health from them with most shots.

I must have screwed up my progression in DC because I was missing 2 runes after I finished the game. I’m in BC 3 and just grabbed the last one. So now I can open up lots of other zones.

Ive been playing Prince of Persia Lost Crown. Feels like a solid 9 so far.

The Lost Crown is so most definitely a 9/10. Enjoy that little gem. It’s the best thing Ubi put out in the past 5+ years.

I'm playing Lost Crown as well. Just got to the boss in the Sand Pit area.

Red Matter {2} 9/10

This is easily one of the best looking PSVR2 games I've played yet, which is even more impressive since this is a last-gen VR game (from 2018-ish) and from a fairly small studio. I've read it's a bit on the short side at around 3-4 hours, so I expect to have it finished by this evening, but I'm really enjoying it. It's a pure puzzle game, so far there hasn't been any type of action to it, just puzzle after puzzle. A couple of the puzzles made me feel like a damn genius when I figured them out, which is something every puzzle game should be aiming for.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:
I enjoyed this game, too! It was a game that made me think - like how an Isaac Asimov sci-fi book might make one ponder ethics, morality, and humanity - particularly later in the game as Nilin learns more about her family/past.

I don't remember a lot about the combat other than it wasn't easy for me to keep up a complex combo streak (I'm not good at rote memorization of button combos). I also played on easy-mode, so, even if I fumbled in melee, I still managed to keep the game going along.

It's a game I want to replay - I started to do so a few years ago, on a harder difficulty level that was just too challenging for me. A remaster or sequel would be nice, even if the sequel had a different character but was set in the same lore world.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

I played it on Quest 2 and it looked pretty good at the time and I liked the game overall. But a 9 seems quite generous. I stopped about halfway through for months and then finished it up. It was a nice journey but it's unlikely I'll ever play it again.

Red Matter 2 looks even better and more impressive although I haven't personally played it.

Alone In The Dark 2024

4/10

When the game works performance wise it’s like a blend of Alan Wake, Resident Evil and Evil Within but there’s just too many bugs and glitches, game breaking ones like what I just encountered shortly into the game in chapter 2, to recommend this game safely to anyone. What’s ironic is the devs just came out with an 11gb patch fixing a plethora of things but seems to have created a new set of problems like the progression bug I just had in my save file. For shame. This game could have been something great too if its quality were better and controls didn't feel so stiff and wonky. The acting is pretty good too from David Harbour and Jodie Comer so it’s one of those neat ideas with poor execution.

I'm still going through some games before my sub runs out in a couple of weeks.

Hollow Knight - I'm pretty much over Metroidvanias / 10

My wife gave this a try a couple of years ago because she likes platformers, and I heard how good 'Hollow Knight' was, but she didn't get far. It then took me three or four different attempts to continue before I stuck with it. Even now, about 10 hours in and halfway through the bosses, I need an extended break from the game.

It's not the game itself. On its own, it's very well done and the music is excellent. But I think I'm just over Metroidvanias. I really wanted to get the new 'Prince of Persia,' but the thought of another of these games has put me off. In the end, it doesn't matter how well made a game is, I'm tired of retreading old ground either for general A to B traversal or upon death. I'm tired of seemingly making progress only to come to a dead end because I don't have a skill yet to let me progress. Of the 10 hours so far, I feel about 60% of that has been those two elements. I've opened up nearly all the map, and have felt like I've barely done anything.

I won't beat this by the time my sub is up, but I do want to complete it. The physical PS4 version is currently out of stock, but I'm contemplating getting it once it's back. Or maybe a deep digital sale.


Horizon Chase Turbo - Should be more enjoyable / 10

I love the vibe. I love the music, even though it's incredibly repetitive. This is another game I've started and stop many times over the years, but most recently I've powered through to make more progress than any of the previous starts. It mainly comes down to the bumper car element of the races. There's always 19 NPC cars, and the player always starts in the back. Depending on the track, it's extremely easy to get blocked from passing, and every time a car hits another car, they bounce off each other. It's definitely worse for the player. I've only ever seen one NPC crash. If the player can't get ahead of enough of the pack early in the race, it's nearly impossible, even with perfect driving and excellent stats, to catch up to first. Now, it's not necessary to get first in each race to move on, nor collect all the coins, but going for 100% it is necessary for both. The racing an be exhilarating, but the player's car is somewhat on auto-pilot in the turns. It's more about managing those turns and avoiding other cars than managing a race line.

Usually I get a handful of races in, the bottom-line game mechanics rear their ugly heads, I get frustrated and have to stop playing. I'm about halfway through the main single-player campaign, but I don't think I'll beat this before my sub is up either. Hopefully the sequel addresses my complaints, because I'm not the only one with them.


Firewall: Zero Hour - Must play with others / 10

I haven't played VR for a while, and I was itching to get back to it. I've heard nothing but great things about 'Firewall,' so I was looking forward to it. Yes, it is a realistic, squad-based shooter akin more to 'Rainbow Six.' The game looks and runs really well, but the overall image is really soft.

Despite the devs claims all over the place, including in the game's description, there really isn't a single-player. What there is, is the ability to play any of the maps for practice, solo. The player's character movement is very slow, so playing solo feels like a slog. The "run" setting is most games' "walk." I wish movement was a little faster and the game at least populated the solo practice sessions with ally NPCs. As it stands, "single-player" is good for learning maps, but not much else. That leaves the multiplayer. Everything else is online. Not my kind of jam, and whenever the servers inevitably close, that means there's not much of a game left. Thankfully, it's easy to find a match still (it helps that PSVRs's 'Ultra' was not well received), so currently, for people into this type of shooter, there's still plenty of fun to be had.


Until You Fall - A fun rogue-lite that isn't 'Hades' / 10

It's no secret I'm not a fan of rogue-lites/likes/whatevers. 'Hades' being the exception, but because the story keeps me going. That said, I enjoy 'Until You Fall' quite a bit! Drenched in neon, the arenas are small and quick to complete, which goes a long way to keeping my attention. You can equip a weapon in each hand, and the gameplay almost feels like a first-person versions of the Wii's 'Skyward Sword,' with blocking and attack motions that must be mimicked at times. Controls are tight and the game is sharp. The music gets repetitive, but there is a bit of a narrative through-line by way of a disembodied voice. At the end of each section, a boost for that run can be selected, and after each run, currency can be spent on permanent upgrades. It's fun! If the arenas were much larger and sections much longer, the game would probably drag and I wouldn't enjoy it as much as I do, but I'll definitely be getting this the next time it's on sale. The only crap thing is that the dev abandoned the PSVR1 version pretty quickly and there's no upgrade path to PSVR2. They claim the latter is almost a new game. I guess so, since next to none of the updates and DLC made it into the PSVR1 version. Oy.

I love metroidvanias, but I take a break between playing them so as to not get burnt on the genre. The same applies to other genres like JRPGs and brawlers.

Currently playing Prince of Persia and it is amazing. I will certainly need a break after Im done with it though.

Yeah that's definitely a good idea. I think for me I don't like the general concept of a Metroidvania from the start. So while I love platformers, I don't enjoy the gameplay overall of being forced to go back and forth.

Looking back, the last Metroidvania I played/beat was 'Tails of Iron' two months ago. The backtracking, etc. isn't that bad in that game because it's smaller and shorter. Before that it was 'Axiom Verge' a whole year ago. So I haven't played many recently.

I was thinking about this recently, because open-world games are essentially 3D Metroidvanias, but I can play those back-to-back-to-back easily. However, given the 3D space, there's multiple ways to traverse back to previous areas and it can be wildly different each time depending on the game. Whereas in 2D Metroidvanias, there's usually only one way and it's exactly the same every time. It's the sameness of the 2D games that wears me down and raises dread of traversing the map. Although more linear 3D games like the 'Prime' series play more like said 2D games, and that drives me nuts too.

I have such a weird relationship with Metroidvanias and I've decided that just because I love Super Metroid doesn't mean I have to keep trying to find another game that makes me feel the way that game made me feel. I don't bother with the genre any more. I did love Dust: An Elysian Tail and Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, though. Like I really, really loved Momodora. So much so that I went on a bit of a binge trying to find something else that was just as good. I tried Hollow Knight, Axiom Verge, Timespinner, Bloodstained, Indivisible, Iconoclasts and a couple of others that people rate highly and didn't like them at all. They are all good games mechanically, if that makes sense, but playing them felt like a chore. So I decided I won't bother with them any more.

I’ve been playing the heck out of dead cells. It’s a metroidvania rouge like. It’s a bit unique in that it is traditional explore, find skills etc for a few runs and then it becomes perfect the gameplay, find the fastest route, best weapons etc. it’s meant to be played until you’re proficient enough to playthrough it all in one life. In a way it kind of changes from rogue like to speed run metroidvania after you get gud. It’s pretty fun. I haven’t been wowed by a metroidvania since SotN to be honest.

Pretty Big fan of Metroidvanias and for me the key is the combat. If that's enjoyable I'll generally stick with it. Good visuals and music helps too.

As for Horizon Chase Turbo, I played that on my phone a long while ago, then got and enjoyed it on PC before taking a break until more recently finally trying the Senna DLC. I loved Top Gear on the as a kid so the game and music resonated for me. But going back for the DLC soured my overall view. Hitting the other cars and the mechanics just got boring. I completed the story mode but just didn't bother with some additional events.
Then I replayed Top Gear for the RTT GotM last month and enjoyed that, so there's just something that TG nails that HCT misses a bit. Likely some personal nostalgia is at play too.

I like metroidvanias quite a bit and have heard great things about Hollow Knight. But I've tried on 4 separate occasions to get into it and just can't. It's dull and not very satisfying to me.

The recent Prince of Persia was great. I think the diversity of the different areas, the combat, the upgrade system, and not being entirely blocked at any point all come together well and kept me playing. Same goes for the Ori games, love 'em.

I've ironically never play 'Super Metroid.' I should get on that. I'd like to play 'The Lost Crown,' but it being a Ubisoft game, I know it'll be cheaper than it currently is. The Ori games are probably my favorite Metroidvanias, but those are more about traversal than combat, and have great shortcuts. The different biomes help immensely too.

I do think combat is key for these games. 'Hollow Knight' has great combat, but some of the enemies, while varied, feel a bit cheap (the flyers). But no matter how good combat is, if I just want to get from point A to B, I skip as much of it as possible anyway. And unfortunately, everything is more or less the same color in 'Hollow Knight.'

Oh man Super Metroid is probably my fave sidescrolling Metroid game next to Fusion. Def get on it!

TalonJedi87 wrote:
Was a fun game. I played it sometime within the past few years and chronicled my progress/adventure here:

https://gametz.com/VideoGame_Discussion/im-finally...

(Took me awhile to find this. Had to look in archived stuff)

Heavyd814life wrote:

Metroid games are in a whole nother level IMO. They just feel right in every aspect. Id say I love the genre but Ive given up on quite a few of them. The Axiom Verge games come to mind. Hollow Knight was rough at the start, but it grabbed me after quite a few hours and I ended up loving it. Its really hard tho.

Playing PoP (even though I love it so far) I feel like these games shouldnt go past 10 hours to beat. They should be cheap, short and sweet. Same with beat'em ups.

I loved Hollow Knight but yeah.... It's excessively, unnecessarily long for a Metroidvania.

kevolones wrote:

I feel like we need to move away from the concept of a game's price being dependent on its length. That's part of what brought us into the age of "every major game release is a 100+ hour open world full of fetch quests and other things you've done a million times before"

Those games are great foe people who are able to hyperfocus on them and immerse themselves, but I think most of them have about 10 hours of interesting game ideas and 90 hours of fluff or random walking around looking for the 10 hours of good stuff.

Of course the cynical side of me says publishers spend all that time adding uninteresting content not just to try to justify the price tag of the game, but also so they can then turn around and push microtransactions to sell you boosts to cut down on the amount of that boring crap you have to play.

TalonJedi87 wrote:

I will...someday. I have beaten 'Metroid: Samus Returns' and loved it (especially after hating the original as a kid). I was lukewarm on 'Dread' though.

benstylus wrote:

I agree, specially nowadays I would rather play a short game. But getting your money's worth out of the game is a complicated topic anyway.

A 3 hour long game at $70 very likely wouldnt be well received. Or at least I personally would not buy it day 1. I like ACGs style of rating a game for that aspect.

Definitely not a black and white subject. Games like GoW are great but often one and done. Something like dead cells I paid 9.99 for has consumed way more of my time but the experience is definitely not on par. A difficult thing to put value on. As I get older I need a coping mechanism but my time is (relatively) way more valuable than it was years past. I’ve gotten to the point as long as I’m not stressed after and get some me time it’s all worth it.

Been playing Talos Principle, really really dig it. Nearly done with the main part (tons of stars to collect still)

Croteam did good

DrizzDrizzDrizz wrote:


This is a game I had heard of, but didn't know who developed it. I didn't realize Croteam did anything other than Serious Sam.

Anxiouz wrote:


Originally I gave it an 8, then a few hours later went back to the game to finish it and then edited to a 9. I thought the puzzles were well thought out, though maybe I only felt that way because I had been playing a co-op puzzle game with my friend called We Were Here: Together. and the puzzles are so frustrating because everything is just left up to you and your friend to figure out, usually nothing is explained to you, so maybe Red Matter's puzzles in comparison to that just felt better designed because the clues are usually right in front of you if you take the time to scan everything in the room. I don't usually have the patience for puzzle games to begin with, so it also helped that I was able to finish this one without the help of a guide which I think should ultimately be the goal of every puzzle game; instead of making the player feel dumb, make them feel like they accomplished something.

DOOM 3 VR Edition {} 8/10

I'm a DOOM fanboy, and I have several good memories of DOOM 3 in particular. First, you can't deny back in 2004 that it was one of the most impressive looking games released up to that point. Then I remember beating it in co-op over Xbox Live with my nephew back in 2005, and we had a blast and finished it in one sitting and it was his first time beating a game in co-op online (my first was Duke Nukem 3D on the Sega Saturn). Too bad that was the only version of the game that had the co-op mode, because with Xbox Live servers down for OG Xbox we'll never get to relive that again.

I buy the DOOM games (and Quake and Duke Nukem 3D) on pretty much everything they release on, even if I have no intention on actually playing them because I've already played them to death, they're just games I want to have on everything. When this got released for PlayStation VR I bought it day one. Sure, it took me 3 years to finally get around to playing it, but that's irrelevant. It's as fun now as it would've been 3 years ago.

The original DOOM 3 was 17 years old when this VR Edition released, and this was released as a budget title with a $20 price tag. You can't beat that price, but what that budget price should also tell you is not to expect them to have gone back and fixed any of the game's faults, such as how the game pauses for around 3-5 seconds when it needs to auto-save. We are far beyond the point where games should need to do that anymore, but the team responsible for this port weren't hired to reinvent the wheel, they were just tasked with giving you a way to play DOOM 3 in VR. Which by the way not only is vanilla DOOM 3 included here, the two expansions are as well, so you're going to get a lot of bang for your buck with this. The main DOOM 3 campaign alone is over 10 hours long, then the two expansions are maybe three or four additional hours each. I typically complain about how short most VR games are, but this game doesn't have that problem.

The graphics, and what I said earlier about it being one of the best looking games at the time it released in 2004...well, that doesn't hold true two decades later. I wouldn't exactly say the game looks ugly, but I recorded around one hour of footage the first time I played, and the video came out looking alright, but in the headset itself things have a sort of low res look. Also, they really should have adjusted certain things, like for example the enemies are kind of smaller than they should be and thus look and feel less threatening. NPC character models are just funny looking with their small heads. Oh, and I guess to be expected from a flat-to-VR port, but the cutscenes are all 2D and you can't even skip them. The frame-rate is silky smooth at all times though, and that's always something you like to see.

As for the audio, I have no complaints. The soundtrack is good and so are the ambient noises around the environment, they really help to make things feel tense when you're exploring a dark area and waiting for your flashlight to recharge.

Controls are fine, though I have had some tracking issues with the DualShock 4, but I won't blame the game for that. I don't have an Aim Controller to play it with, but I've heard that is the best way to play it (as is often the case with any game that supports it).

For the rest of the game, there's a little more backtracking than I'd like (and you don't even get a map), but the two expansions get rid of that and go back to the roots. There's more of a horror element to this DOOM than its predecessors, and even though I've beaten this a few times before, being in VR now really ups the tension and there have been a few times where an enemy scared the crap out of me in a dark area where I couldn't see it, and I definitely like that in my VR games. Overall though for $20 and the amount of content included here, I don't know why this game gets left out of so many "must play PSVR titles" lists, because it definitely belongs there.

Spirit of the North {} 6/10

Here we've got another one of those indie games that starts you off with a brief cutscene that explains nothing to the player about the journey you are about to embark on. There's no dialog, and I think they put the bare minimum in place for a story so they can leave it up to "viewer interpretation", which imo often comes off as lazy because not enough games do it right. To be determined if this game nails it or not.

I won't lie, seeing screenshots of this in the eShop reminded me of the games The First Tree and Never Alone and that's why I bought it. A platformer/adventure game with some puzzles sprinkled in sounded good at the time. Speaking of those screenshots though, they're a lie. Those were clearly taken from the big boy console and PC versions, because it looks nowhere near that good on Switch, in fact at times it looks down right ugly, with low res, blurry textures. Nintendo needs to put a stop to that kind of crap. For Switch owners it's like when a fast food chain advertises their new burger and once it's in your hands you realize it looks nowhere near as good as it did in the commercial. I thought this would be one of those occasional games that actually looks better in handheld mode because the smaller screen can hide its flaws, but that's not the case here.

Controls can be finicky at times too, which can really screw you over on some of the platforming sections. Overall after looking into it, it seems this will be a fairly short game at 5-ish hours. I'm around 2 hours into it and was actually debating if I should just restart it on PS5 since it's in the PS+ Extra catalog now and labeled as "Enhanced Edition", but after checking a review it looks like the graphics were the only thing enhanced and the platforming controls are still kinda messy, so I'll stick with this version and delete it to free up space immediately after.

Prince of Persia The Lost Crown - 9/10

System Shock remake ps5 -

I've been a fan of the original game since it came out 30 years ago. I pledged the kickstarter for it, choosing to get it on ps4 (which ultimately included ps5). There was development trouble and people still complain about it. But, ultimately the promise was fulfilled and I'm satisfied after playing and completing the game.

If you haven't heard of it, it's an "immersive sim", like a rougher version of Bioshock. Instead of an underwater city, you play as a cybernetically enhanced hacker on a space station. It's a first person shooter with audio logs you find along the way that tell the story. The villain is SHODAN an AI that had its ethical restraints removed.

It's a challenging game that doesn't hold your hand. There is no quest menu or arrow showing you which way to go. There are just the audio logs and hints they give you as to what to do next. Using a notebook to write things down is advisable. Most people will use a guide. Combat is often brutal, even on the lowest difficulty. Save often. The maps are convoluted. This is a PC game that was ported to consoles. Some of the controls are awkward and aiming with a joypad instead of a mouse is a challenge. Despite all that, you get used to it, learn to play better and it get focused on beating it.

bill wrote:

Was waiting to see how you felt about this one. I remember playing the pc release in high school, and the sequel in my dorm room in college. I definitely want to revisit this. It was the next step up from all the id clones for me.

Yeah, my memory of SS was like that too. Doom was this huge breakthrough in terms of full-screen movement and action. Then SS added so much depth to the story... immersion. It was janky for sure though and rough. Some of that roughness is still in the remake for sure.

SS2 was a better game and is still fairly playable. I'd like to see a remake of that, but we'll see.

For the remake, I got all the trophies except "win on the hardest difficulty". I'm not sure I'll go for that, but maybe later if I run low on good stuff to play. I had seen some old posts about achievements being messed up, but it was fine.

I'm not sure if there will be another patch, but I did see some people listing bugs they wanted fixed. Once I got past the initial controls issues (learned to workaround them), I didn't find the game buggy.

Been playing Dragon Dogma 2 via portal. I’ve maybe put 5 hours or so into it so far. Aside from the washed out graphics (I’m coming off of Tsushima so that’s part of the problem) and some janky game play, I’m digging it so far. The lack of fast travel is shameful.

Been on a bit of a BioWare kick the last two months or so. Finally finished my latest Dragon Age: Origins playthrough on the Steam Deck and I'm done with ME1 and the main story of ME2 on the PS5. Going through the DLC content now and just finished up Lair of the Shadow Broker. Easily the best piece of single player DLC I've ever played. It just holds up so damn well. Most of the game does. There are certain older games where the art direction is just so on point that they hold up so well even today. The OG BioShock is another game like that. My brother played through it for the first time last weekend. I watched and helped him through most of it. It came out 17 years ago which is just insane when I think about it. The only thing that didn't really age very well is the hacking minigame which is even more tedious than I remember it being. But I think I may replay all three games in the series at some point this year.

Heavyd814life wrote:
There are certain older games

The OG BioShock is my GOAT. Love the lore.

Both my son and I have been fighting over the disc(s) to Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (XSX) and we're both having a great time leap-frogging each other with our progress. I'd have to imagine we've each sunk 20+ hours into it. Sure it's repetitious and the world is far too big, but I'm really enjoying the game. It's also interesting how different we're playing the game...he's doing loads of stealth and crafting and I'm just powering through with guns and buying my upgrades.

It also has a 40fps mode which is something I've really been enjoying when games support it. The game looks and plays really good and it's a nice mix of smoothness and quality. I hope more games do this until we finally reach the 4k/60fps/RT standard (maybe the next gen?).

Escape Academy {} 8/10

My friend and I are enjoying this a lot. It's an escape room game that can be played single player or with a friend in two player co-op (co-op is the way to go) with some good puzzles that are not too easy but also won't leave you frustrated due to the game failing to give any explanation (I'm lookin' at you, We Were Here series...)

There's one annoying bug in the game where if time runs out before you've completed the puzzle and you choose to continue with a little more time added, it never lets my friend do anything unless we restart the level completely. I don't know if it has anything to do with the fact she's playing on PS4 and I'm playing on PS5. I've reached out to the devs about it but haven't heard back yet, but this is so far my only real gripe with the game, and the fact that the game is 2 years old and this still hasn't been fixed yet.