VideoGame_Discussion

Sounds like it's as bad as the original Axiom Verge.

Kommie wrote:

I guess! Never got more than an hour or 2 into that one.

Axiom Verge 1 sucked for me. I also didn’t get passed the first couple of hours. The level design and weapons were just lame.

Axiom Verge just felt awful to play. Never understood the appeal of it.

I just got to Act 2 in Inscryption. Very strange game, but I'm enjoying it so far.

I enjoyed Inscryption. It only gets weirder too :)

Orlandu wrote:

The two things I've heard about the game are:

1. It's weird.
2. Go in blind.

Even with that warning it still caught me off guard a bit.

It's weird, people seem to either love or hate Axiom Verge. There's not much in between. I really loved it overall, but it did have too much backtracking, and there were a couple times when I had absolutely no idea where to go next and just had to re-explore the entire world to find the passage I had missed. I don't care for that kind of stuff, but the rest of the game was good enough that I was able to overlook it. I still need to play Axiom Verge 2.

I always assumed Axion Verge was some highly regarded game. Seems like it came out for just about every system, even the Wii U and vita. Does it have an easy mode (dont judge me)?

@sa330206 I'd say it is highly regarded overall, metacritic scores are mostly in the high 80s (but do vary widely by platform for some reason). There's not an easy mode, just normal and hard. The difficulty mostly comes from keeping track of the huge world and figuring out where to go next. The combat isn't too bad, but I do think it's more challenging than most Metroid games.

Inscryption is friggen awesome. I wanted to go for the platinum, but there's too much RNG for me in the challenge stages. Even then though, I still go back and play it sometimes for fun

Finished up Mafia Definitive Edition. While I was a bit annoyed with the linear path, it did force me to actually finish the story and move on without getting distracted by side stuff. Gameplay was fairly dated but it's a remake from 2002. Story was really good. Overall I'd give it a solid 7, I'd recommend checking it out .

I always wanted to check out the Mafia series. Glad to hear the original holds up decently well.

Mafia 1 remastered is pretty damn good. Mafia 2 on the other hand is a whole different kind of animal.

Currently playing Pocket Card Jockey for the 3DS. It's pretty fun, but I just wish there was more to do. There's only so many races to win and so many horses to unlock. IMO the race selection difficulty should scale a little better with your horses, and you should unlock more races as your horses level up. No idea if they improved any of this in the more recent apple arcade game, I don't do apple ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Pocket Card Jockey was a really interesting concept. I got some bad hands and ended up putting it down for Pokemon Picross, but I'd like to revisit some day.

I beat Inscryption. I think I ended up liking the first chapter the best. I get thematically why each chapter was wildly different, but the third felt a tad too long. Still glad I played it. Weird game, but the stuff outside of the game is way weirder. For those of you who have beaten the game (seriously, don't click these links if you haven't played it):

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/inscryption-endi...
https://docs.google.com/document/u/2/d/e/2PACX-1vT...

AssassinFiver wrote:

I bought and played a good amount of this last fall, and generally agree. Once I had my fill of the main gameplay, I put it down. I'll play from time to time (I like solitaire games), but the forced fails early on for tutorial's sake really annoyed me.

DCGX wrote:
Oh yeah. I plan on unlocking everything in the game (trophies, special horses, etc.) but after that I can't really see myself replaying it.

I gave up on Infernax. Got to the first dungeon and to get to the boss after dying is way too far for me to deal with this crap after dying.

Orlandu wrote:

Oh yeah I played some pokemon picross but if I remember correctly there was a lot of in-app purchases? Wasn't really my thing but I might revisit it now that you mention it.

Been meaning to play Inscryption! Watched a playthrough of it but they stopped after they reached the second chapter so I never saw how it ended. Have it on my steam wishlist now and plan on playing it once I've finished the unplayed games in my library. You say each chapter was wildly different: does it retain deck-building at least, or is it a different style of gameplay entirely?

@AssassinFiver Pokemon Picross is one of the very few in-app purchase games that can be played completely offline. As a result of that it's possible to edit your save to max out your in game currency, which makes it way more fun to play. Alternately you can probably also just toggle a cheat for them. The cheat would for sure require custom firmware, but I can't remember if the save edit method does. Here's a tutorial to edit the save: https://gbatemp.net/threads/infinite-picrites-on-p...

As for Inscryption the downtime between card battles, visual style, and how you build/maintain your deck are the major changes between chapters. Each chapter also adds a few wrinkles to the card battling, but the core card combat remains for the entire game. Don't want to say too much for fear of spoiling. It's a reasonably quick game (maybe 10-15 hours depending on how successful you are), so definitely give it a shot if you're interested.

Been playing 8 Doors on my PC. 7/10 I guess
It was on a list of good Metroidvanias to try and Amazon Games (Twitch) gave it away free a while back so I wanted to give it a go. You play as a girl who's town and dad apparently get killed in the opening clip and you head to purgatory to get him back. Game is pretty decent, with nods to Hollow Knight for sure, but others in the genre too. Color pallet is unique, mainly grey/black/white, but with some red.
Controls aren't too bad, but I think this originally came out on the Switch, so when using an X1 controller on my PC it shows that in the key-config/bind settings, but incorrectly flips A/B and X/Y, also a number of onscreen tutorials when you get new things will show a white/blank area for what button assignment will trigger the new feature - not horrible, but feels a little unfinished in that regard.
I'm cheating a little as I've got a complete map open in the background, but I'm trying not to use it a ton, more for backtracking or to verify if there are hidden things I missed. It's cheap, I get it, but I don't really want to wander around too much. Boss fights have been decent but slow. You really need to move close, get it a few hits and react to the next, generally, 1 of 4-6 attacks they'll do. Dodge it and get in a few more hits. After likely about 50%, they've all yelled and triggered phase 2, where so far they've really only more closely chained 2 attacks. Hardest one was this tree creature that would inhabit a 1 of 2 trees that are almost in the background, 1 on the far left and right of the screen, such that you could stand in the middle and not see him on either side. Well he could still hit you with some attacks and would flip btwn the 2, so you had to move too far too often, otherwise he wasn't bad. Didn't like how you could purchase an upgrade to see the health of the bosses, but you had to hit a sort of non-normal attack button and the displayed health would go away after about 5 seconds, sort of lame and not overly useful.
According to stats I'm at 40% after only 2 sessions playing I'd guess 3+ hrs. It's worth finishing, I figure.

The Crew 2 {} 6/10
I dunno, I just wanted a racing game to play, but maybe I should've chosen a different one, not open-world and with minimal story. I just wanna race, is that too much to ask?
I recall playing quite a bit of The Crew when Ubisoft made the PC version free back in 2017 (I think) and I kind of liked it. Turns out this game released in 2018 and seems to still be getting new content added all these years later. They also added planes, boats and motorcycles. That's cool and crap, but I just ain't feeling this. Maybe it is better than I'm giving it credit for, but I feel a racing game isn't the genre where you need to sink a handful of hours into before you know if you like it or not. The opening intro where you fly the plane, drive the boat and then the car was pretty cool though and in the 2 hours I played that was the highlight. I'll be uninstalling it now.

Im playing Witcher 3 again, mostly to do the DLC. Even compared to newer games I still think this is easily the best open world game Ive played.

I want to play the Witcher 3, but I can't shake the feeling that I would have to play 1 and 2 first.

You dont really need to. You could read up on the events of 1 and 2 if you want. Or play, sure, but they havent aged well though.

@Orlandu oh crap dude that's a game changer, thanks for the tip!

@AssassinFiver No prob! With that change it's my favorite Picross game out of all of them.

I started up sleeping dogs definitive on ps4. I played it on Xbox 360 years ago so I figured I'd give the definitive version a shot. So far it's been fine but I don't remember the controls being this clunky (esp. driving).

I think they are a tad clunky. You get used to it after a while, though.

Playing Sonic Frontiers (PS5) and boy is this a mess of a game. Basically just constant collecting, insane pop-in, lots of bugginess, and the older-school levels are just as clumsy as before. Sure it's better than a lot of previous Sonic games but that's not really saying a lot, and this is not nearly as good as people made it out to be. There's some fun to be had but this feels like a AA title.

Eagle Flight {} 6/10
There's not a whole lot to this game. I think this is one of those VR games that tiptoes the line between what is a "VR game" and what is considered a "VR experience". You are playing as an eagle and flying around a post-apocalyptic Paris, fifty years after the demise of humanity. That's it. There are some objectives (things like fly through hoops or shoot down groups of falcons by "squaking" at them) and collectibles to find, but there's not a lot of depth here. There is a multiplayer mode which even includes cross-play between PC VR headsets, but of course there isn't anyone playing it at this point so I haven't gotten to try it and have no idea what kind of stuff you can do with other players. The game can be played by anyone as the controls are really simple: L2 and R2 for slow down/speed up, and you tilt your head to steer the eagle (your instincts might tell you to turn your head, but the game will constantly remind you to only tilt it).

Casual players will probably have more fun just doing the free-fly mode while experienced players will have more fun with the story mode for the 3 hours it lasts, though it's not that the story is all that good, but some of the levels get intense while you're flying fast and trying not to crash (most races are under 3 minutes but you will have to restart from the beginning anytime you crash into something). While it is cool and relaxing flying around a virtual Paris for a bit, there's just not enough to keep you coming back to it and I would have liked if they had done more with the graphics because at times it looks like an early PlayStation 3 game.

I forgot I had gotten 'Eagle Flight' when it was cheap years ago, so I tried it yesterday and got through chapter 2. I love Paris, and while this isn't a terribly accurate version of the city, I like flying around it. Too much flying through rings though, and, being a Ubisoft game, too many collectibles. so 'Eagle Flight' gets a 7/10 for me. There is online multiplayer, which is cool.

I also tried 'Doom VFR' yesterday. I got the physical release cheap years ago. It was updated after launch to use the Aim controller, which is what I used. It works for the most part, but I couldn't find a way to remap button, and the weapons wheel is mapped to R1 which is not easily accessible in the heat of a battle. There's smooth turning, but teleportation only. You can juke in four directions, but this game needs full locomotion. It really drags down the experience. 7/10 for me too.

Finally, I played through 'Batman Arkham VR.' This is definitely more an experience than a game, but it leans into the detective element of Batman. That's cool, but it's easy. The game takes place between 'City' and 'Knight,' but it's obvious what's going on. Anything action related is relegated to a black screen with sound effects, including fighting and driving vehicles. You can look at giant models of many vehicles in the Batcave, including things like the BVS: Dawn of Justice batmobile, but not much else. After "beating" the game, which abruptly ends, Riddler trophies appear in each part of each chapter to find and solve, which open 3D models of many things. It's cool. Another 7/10 from me.

'Doom VFR' is definitely the meatiest, because it's a real game albeit short, but the story mode in 'Eagle Flight' was a nice surprised. 'Batman' is still cool, because you're Batman, but even Batman suffers from the dreaded short VR shins. Most of the time each of these goes on sale for a few dollars, and I'd say each is worth that.

Eagle Flight was one of my favorite PSVR games. I just enjoyed flying around casually collecting things. It felt great zipping between buildings.

Callisto Protocol (PS5) - 8/10 - After a simple google search it looks like I'm 30-40% through, probably a little bit more. It definitely has Dead Space vibes which I love, and I generally really dig everything here, but man does the DS similarity just make me wish for a direction/nav arrow! This is super linear until it's not, and it's confusing when you find interesting things on the side but it's not where you should be going and it's really not clear on how you get back to the main path.

The door says Maintenance but I'm supposed to get to Medical. But Medical is ultimately through Laundry, and then Maintenance. But if you miss some audio cues I don't know how you can get reminders or guides. The audio clips via the menu are meaningless on their own.

So it's not as great as DS but I absolutely love it so far. The 3D audio headset it's fantastic and it makes me giddy when I hear creepies moving through air ducts near me, then over me, then to the side. The 3D audio is So. Damn. Good.

Hogwarts Legacy: Incredible attention to detail makes Hogwarts really fun to explore. The combat can be challenging and should get a little more interesting as the game goes along. The menu system is pretty poor, and the loot system with a 20 item cap is terrible. If you play this definitely do not go crazy exploring in the beginning because the items in the treasure chests are tied to your current level.

Hogwarts... at time feels like a walking tutorial. But I can run around and cast spells and pet cats.

Yeah, it definitely suffers from modern gaming syndrome. Enormous checklist collection without a lot of interesting interaction. I bought it for my girlfriend since she loves Harry Potter. She mostly just enjoys walking around the castle and taking in all the detail and the non-combat quests. She makes me do all of the fighting stuff.

It Takes Two {} 10/10
I will say if you have a decent gaming PC, Xbox or PlayStation, just play this on there instead. The downgrade in the graphics is very noticeable, it looks muddy as hell, I saw some weird little graphical glitches during a few cutscenes, and no way is this game close to hitting 60 fps like the other versions (it's still a consistent 30 though which is good enough for me), and even docked 720p is the best you're gonna get. There seems to be more load times on Switch too. For those reasons alone I say this is the worst version to play.
But, it still gets a 10 from me because it's the worst version of a game that is still incredibly fun regardless of any visual downgrades, it is still one of the best co-op games I've ever played (this will be my 3rd playthrough) and I'm impressed they even have this running on Switch to begin with. Only because I enjoy this game so much did I go back on my "no longer buying multiplatform games on Switch" rule.

I'm playing this with a friend from Japan (she's using the Friend Pass which I'm glad wasn't region restricted) and there is absolutely no lag. Every time I play a platformer (2D or 3D) in online co-op and it runs flawless like this, it just makes me even more pissed that Nintendo screwed up so badly with Super Mario Maker 2's online mode. How are all these other developers getting it right?

My friend and I played for a little over 4 hours so far, it was her first time playing and the only complaint she had was the lack of gyro for controlling the camera and where you're aiming your weapon. She's a big Splatoon fan and just doesn't like using analog sticks for things like that and as a fan of gyro myself I do agree it would've been great to have it, but she only plays on Nintendo consoles and I don't, so I'm used to games not having it.

The Medium {} 6/10
I'm not really feeling this game. I just was browsing the PS+ Extra Game Catalog for anything that resembled a horror game and chose this. I kinda dig the split-screen gimmick, but the game itself is just boring me. I guess I was hoping for a little more action and less...walking around. After barely 2 hours I've uninstalled it. Usually I like to give games more time than that before I dismiss them, but I don't know if this one will get any better, I recall when it first released a lot of people were just talking about how average it was.

Crysis 2 Remastered - 7.5/10
I am about 3/4 thru this one and while more COD than Far Cry from the previous installment, it sure looks pretty and polished enough and sounds pretty robust on a surround system. It's a little more linear than the previous game and that may be an issue for some, but I think it's just fine. And with all the flooded open world games nowadays, sometimes all that's needed is a straight path to victory in a focused shooter, even one that's dated as this with it's almost fresh coat of paint. Some technical issues I've encountered though such as action prompts appearing out of context as well as some frame drops here and there and inconsistencies within the audio mixing, sometimes the sound effect are too loud, while the dialogue and music is too soft. I'm also not a fan of a return to a silent protagonist here after having the main character Nomad speak in the previous game, but I think in Crysis 3 they have the main protagonist speak again, which I'm looking forward to.

@PizzaTheHutt yeah The Medium was not very good. I played it right before it was set to leave GP on the XSX and if not for that 'play this now or never' vibe I likely would've given up too. But it wasn't super long and I didn't bother exploring much and just pushed through it. It was also very easy except for a few dumb instant kill things later on. It's another of those could've been great but just wasn't titles.