VideoGame_Discussion

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

kevolones wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

budget, quality

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

Kommie wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yup

I think Little Hope and Man of Medan were better than the Quarry overall, but i enjoy these games for couch co-op

R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 {} 7/10
I never got to play this back in the day, so when I saw it was added to March's Classic Game Catalog for PS+ Premium I downloaded it right away while I'm still on this racing game kick.

First thing you see right off the bat when loading the game up...this clearly did not get the upscaling love and care treatment that the PSP Ridge Racer game I played a couple weeks ago did. This still looks very much like a PS1 game. The menus are so pixelated that it's almost hard to read what you are selecting.

The overall handling of the game feels a little better than the PSP game did. There is a story mode, I don't play racing games for a story (thanks, but no thanks) so don't ask me what it's about because I just skip through what they're saying to get to the next race. I know I'll not finish this, I've read it gets tedious trying to unlock everything in the game (a couple hundred unlockable cars). I know this reviewed really well back in 1999, but I'm not sure how much time I will be devoting to it in 2023. Still, again, I'm disappointed in the way they didn't help out the graphics the way they did with the previous Ridge Racer 2 I was just playing. But at least gameplay-wise it is still decent considering how old it is.

loztdogs wrote:

I thought I read in the newer 2k games you can't even play some of the modes once the online servers go down. I can't remember if that was only the McCareer stuff or dynasties too? Do you know if that's true?

@sa330206 unfortunately I don’t. I try to stay away from the newer 2k games and stick to the older versions simply cause I just want to play and not be bogged down by all the added nonsense.

It's hard to beat the NBA Street series.

I’m about halfway thru Hi-Fi Rush now. Man this game is like a rhythm hack and slash Devil May Cry only animated in super smoking sexy style. Loving it so far. 8.5/10

Racing Karts {} 3/10
More eShop trash brought to you by Nintendo giving zero fudges and just accepting anything that gets submitted to them.

I don't remember when I got this. It must have either been during a holiday giveaway by some indie publisher, or it was on sale for pennies and I had just enough leftover gold coins to pay for it. Either way, it will be getting deleted as soon as I'm finished typing this post.

This ain't the fun kind of Kart racer, with turtle shells and banana peels. The racing in this game plays just as generic as you would think based on the title. Even the graphics are generic low-polygon looking crap, almost like Virtua Racing on the Sega Genesis (but at least that game was impressive for its time), complete with parts of the environment being drawn in as you race across the whopping 5 tracks the game offers.

And as bad as the graphics are, the handling is worse. The gas button is ZR which is common in racing games, but the drift button is assigned to the R button with no way to configure it to another button unless you change it through the console options menu yourself. It just feels awkward holding the Pro Controller that way but you have to do it because drifting is the only way to fill up your boost meter and without boosting you'll never catch up to the CPU racers, even on the rookie difficulty.

Oh and at the main menu they couldn't even spell "Time Trial" correctly, it's typo'd as "Trail".

Just out of curiosity I tried looking for the game's credits in the option menu so I could see if this was just a one man project (not that I would forgive it for that), but there were none to be found. Nobody wants their name associated with this turd, and I don't blame them. After searching a little more I found out it was indeed a one man project by a developer that has released quite a few bad games in the eShop, almost all of which are just asset flip shovelware made with Unity.

Alright I've got nothing else to say about this, I've already spent more time typing this up than this game was worth.

Atomic Heart 7/10 6/10

I am about 4 hours in. It’s good but weird. Different. Puzzles are weird but clever. Combat is weird but effective. Dialogue is funny but tiresome. I can understand why ppl didn’t like this but it grows on you the more you play I feel. Kinda like Days Gone. I hated Days Gone at first but about 1/3 into the game it clicked and I really started to enjoy it and understand it better. I feel like that’s what is happening here. Thank goodness for game pass tho. Like most big budget games nowadays, I cannot see spending $70 on this. If it wasn’t on game pass I would have waited for a deep, deep sale.

Edit*** dropping my score due to potential game breaking bugs such as random brightness changes and infinite elevator rides causing you to have to hard reboot the app are annoyances I cannot ignore.

Omori

So far it's fun. Looks good, and has a nice soundtrack.

I wanted to play something different in the meantime before the release of the upcoming Zelda game. And this game seemed different, with its art style and the game dealing with themes of depression (I don't know many games that focus on that - seemed unique), so when it was posted for sale here, I went for it.

It's an RPG. I'm currently trying to locate a lost mixtape for a space pirate captain who won't get out of bed. It will supposedly cheer him up.

Even though the game deals with themes of depression, it doesn't completely focus on that, which is good. There's a nice amount of humor, which is definitely appreciated.

I'm a couple hours in, so can't really give a score yet.

Steam reviews were pretty cool: overwhelmingly positive from 49,000+ ratings. I didn't know the game had such a following.

Thanks @thatfootballguy

Yakuza Kiwami 2 - 7/10
Not near as good as 0 but probably on par with kiwami 1. Kind of dread starting 3 as it will probably be a huge step back so I'm going to start a different game/series next.

@sa330206 It's a pretty big step back. Give it a good while before playing. You probably out to play it on easy, too, since it's just a CPU blockfest.

KartRider: Drift {} 5/10
This is at least better than that last racing game I played on Switch, but that isn't saying much.

It supports cross-platform multiplayer between PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and mobile, so there are always people to play against, especially because it's free-to-play. Actually because it is free-to-play is why I went in with low expectations, but it ended up not being as bad as I thought, it's just very average. Kart racers are one of my favorite genre of games, so I'll give any of them a fair chance (and I recently bought a Humble Bundle of kart racers, so I might be playing a lot of them over the next few weeks).

Overall it is a very run-of-the-mill kart racer and anything it does has already been done better by the more popular kart racers out there. The game runs smoothly, I haven't noticed any lag and that's with quite a few Korean mobile players in the lobbies (the developer is also Korean, so maybe it has a following there). There are some balancing issues with the items I think, though. In one race I was only in 2nd or 3rd place when I was given this game's equivalent of the blue shell. I can't comment about the microtransactions, I do my best to just ignore them in any game that has them, but it's a safe bet they're used to customize your character and kart and buy better ones. I'm not sure if that puts me at a disadvantage by not spending money since I've been able to get a few finishes in the Top 3. But then again I'm not exactly taking this game seriously anyway, I have only played for a couple of hours, of course I'm going to get beat by the players that have bought/grinded to unlock the better stuff.

Mafia: Definitive Edition (PS4 on PS5) - 7/10 - It was kind of refreshing to have an open-world that was super linear with very little side activities or map filler. I guess that's the core game showing its age, but even with the map being kinda dull and bland, I dug the 1930's vibe, the story was interesting enough, the characters/voices were well done, and the simplicity of the game was a nice change of pace. I think I got through this in a weekend or so which felt rather short, but I enjoyed this enough that I'm going to give Mafia 2 a spin (at some point).

Pretty much exactly the same thoughts when I beat it recently, although I’d give it a 7.5 I guess.

Not sure when I’ll get around to Mafia 2, maybe if/when it comes to ps plus

After reading some reviews I decided I'm going to skip Mafia 2 and instead grab Mafia 3. Both are <$10 digital but #3 looks more up my alley so I'm DLing it now.

Just got to what I think is the final boss in Kena: Bridge of Spirits and the difficulty spike is obnoxious. I need this to be over asap. I'm only about 12 hours in, but it feels like 30 because the entire gameplay loop gets old really fast. It looks like a Pixar movie, plays like a Souls game (for real, I'm playing on Hard and it's a real challenge), and the entire vibe is like the older Zelda games with a little Pikmin mixed in. Sounds solid on the surface, but it's just sooo boring and repetitive and tedious. I wonder if anyone else felt this way. And while the narrative has its moments, the storytelling is far too shallow and fragmented to be enjoyable/memorable. I don't know. It's not terrible - it's a solid 7 - but I definitely had higher expectations.

@Heavyd814life I felt the same way. Bored out of my skull 4 hours in so I just bailed on the game. I've had no desire to play it again.

I liked Kena but yeah those difficulty spikes out of nowhere were pretty ridiculous.

Wasn't a big fan of Kena, I eventually dumped the difficulty just to beat it but it was certainly better than Stray as far as AA titles go.

Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear To The Rescue {} 6/10

I remember playing this on the Nintendo 64 way back when it first released, trying to help one of my younger nephews who couldn't get the hang of 3D platforming. I didn't put a lot of time into it, but I recall thinking it was a pretty decent game and not the usual licensed trash game I was used to getting as a kid in the 8 and 16-bit eras.

Revisiting it all these years later though and looking at it differently, I can see the faults more easily now. I don't like having to deal with the camera. You control the camera with the L2 and R2 buttons instead of the right analog stick. The DualShock had released 2 years prior to this game, but I guess it took a while for developers to figure out what to do with the extra analog stick because it's not used in this game at all. Also, the audio during the FMV scenes is really too loud (a problem I wouldn't have noticed on the N64 version since the FMV would have been replaced by still images). Finding collectable items can also sometimes be a pain because this suffers from a problem pretty much all 3D platformers of this era had, where you can't see the items (or enemies, power-ups, etc.) from a far distance until you get close enough to them, so you pretty much have to inspect every area of the level if you are going to hunt them all down. Enemies you've defeated will also respawn if you walk far enough away.

The rest of the game itself still seems decent, I guess. I mean, it doesn't hold a candle to 3D platformers released these days, but then again I don't think any 3D platformers from 32/64-bit era can. Overall it feels a bit on the easy side (and surprisingly they removed all cheat codes even though they didn't add in Trophy support), and if the camera wasn't an issue I probably could've breezed through this over a couple of days, but since the camera controls annoy me as well as a few other things like Buzz's repetitive one-liners, I just played through one or two levels per day and for that it's fine since every level pretty much has the same objectives anyway, the only thing that changes is the scenery.

-=-
Tray Racers! {} 3/10
I'm always hunting through the eShop for trash to play (it usually doesn't take long because there's certainly no shortage of crap in there), and this just released and happened to be free. Somehow I still feel ripped off.
Basically you are racing through sand dunes in a "post-apocalyptic world". The tracks are randomly generated which might explain why none of them felt well designed. Before you can officially race you are forced to do several minutes of practice runs with the other players you are matched up with. The game supports up to 16 players, but I never found a lobby that had more than 5 in it. Maybe the ridiculously long load times turned most players off, I know it did for me. One loading screen was so long I thought the game had crashed. Anyway, it'll be a strong contender for worst game of the year.