VideoGame_Discussion

Yeah it’s pretty fantastical. The battle music too gets in ya head.

Aqua Kitty UDX - Addicting out of Frustrating
This was on my Wishlist for a long while, is on sale and I have a little Steam funds (thanks Ren2K), so I bought it and... I wish I hadn't. It's nice looking and was fun for a while as I pushed through the first 5-7 levels, then the 2nd boss level was hard and took 20+ attempts, then the level like 3-4 after that I must have tried 40+ times, but it's so addicting and easy to hit A to retry that I spent 2.5 hours playing it just now... foolish.

Advice, don't buy this, even at the $2.05 or whatever it's on sale for. Yes it's enjoyable for a bit but holy Flark does it get annoyingly challenging pretty quick. I see there's an easy mode so maybe I'll try that b/c I do enjoy the play in general, though constantly having to save the miners gets old since there's SO MUCH going on screen that trying to rush over and kill the abductor craft before it surfaces is a challenge in itself... maybe I should stop trying and maybe only protect 1 or 2 miners if they're close together, but with some of the seeking torpedoes you almost have to run from them b/c trying to dodge them generally means you'll just run into another projectile.

Archangel {} 8/10
I feel like this game could be used as an example to show friends or family who have never played VR just what it is capable of. It's a legit game, not just some lame "VR experience" that you show off once and then get bored of. And this is now the type of game I want more of in VR. It's an on-rails shooter where you are controlling this giant mech, shooting and smashing stuff to smithereens and it's really fun but it's the type of game where I wouldn't even play this if it wasn't in VR.

Kudos to the developers, it's like they knew how to work around any limitations of the hardware and they freakin' nailed it. The game lets you play with two PS Move controllers or a DualShock 4, and in my experience the tracking of the PS Move controllers works great so I didn't even bother using the DS4, PS Move controllers are the definitive way to play this. The graphics also don't suffer from the dreaded "screendoor effect".

I only have a few complaints about the game. Stop me if you've heard this one before, but damn it's pretty short. At roughly a little over three hours in length though, that's longer than most of the other VR games I've been playing lately. Difficulty-wise, I don't know if it's a complaint, but it does get pretty hard. I started out on Normal difficulty, got to the third level (six total from what I've read) and died a few too many times, so I decided to bump the difficulty down a notch to Easy, and to do that meant I had to restart from level one (fyi Easy is still pretty freakin' hard and I still haven't beaten that third level yet). I would have stuck it out on Normal, it's just that I got tired of looking at load screens every time I died and they're 20-ish seconds each which starts to add up, plus all the dialog you have to sit through each time you continue. If you like torturing yourself, the game even offers a permadeath mode where if you die even once you must restart from the beginning. Final complaint, I don't think there is much replay value here. Normally if you enjoy a game enough by the time you've finished it, you could go back and unlock more trophies in it, but this game only has six of them and you won't even get one for taking the time to get good enough at it to beat it on permadeath mode, so you can likely get them all in one playthrough.

TalonJedi87 wrote:
Chrono Trigger 2? 😄

They didn't get the same composer for the music, did they? Because both Chrono games have great soundtracks.

I started playing Forza Horizon 5 I mean Crew Motorfest (PS5) this evening. I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit but, yeah, it's basically FH5 but clumsier. With the 3D headset the car sounds are good and the music selection is leagues better than what was in FH5. The audio in this in generally is pretty good as well as the dual sense controller stuff. I'm having fun. It's just shocking how egregiously this copies the FH formula.

I enjoy reading all of your VR reviews. I remember Archangel. I beat it last year, and it does hold up well even on the old hardware.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

XIII (PS5) - 6/10 - This is the recent PS5/XSX "remaster" of the recent PS4/X1 remake. I played the X1 remake on XSX and got stuck on a mission and could never get past it. In this updated version (on PS5) I'm breezing through the game. It's not good, but the cell-shaded style looks better and this game does have some charm.

The voice acting is atrocious (shame on both of you David Dachovny and Adam West) and the cutscenes lack anything of interest, plus the voicework just makes it all so lame. But dang if I'm not enjoying playing this simple game after some open-world stuff. It was like $4 of PSN and for that price it's worth it.

But again, it's not good although better than it was. Some odd stuff like you can now carry all the weapons you find (you were limited before)...but guns (and their ammo) resets at certain checkpoints or level breaks. So you may lose weapons at a cutscnee (but gain more ammo for the weapons that carry over) so there's no reason to horde ammo. Strange.

This is an ok ($10 or less) game now if you are fond of the nostalgia or just want a linear shooter.

nonamesleft wrote:

Oh yeah. Some tracks in Sea of Stars were recorded by the OG composer from Chrono Trigger. I think he also did Super Mario RPG too bsck in the day.

Marvel Spider-Man 2 - 8/10 - Visually impressive, fun gameplay but very familiar. I enjoyed it but feel a smaller more focused story would have worked better, they put a lot of content into the last few hours that I think could have been better paced as another game or extended DLC.
Assassin's Creed Mirage - 7/10 - Gameplay was fun, the first game to feel like a real Assassin's Creed game in a while.

Duke Nukem 1 Remastered on Evercade

This game is WAY easier in wide-screen than the original boxed in version. I like the new additions like the background music. It feels a little off running that smoothly though. I turned the jerkiness back on for effect

TalonJedi87 wrote:
They got Yasunori Mitsuda for Sea of Stars?! I'm excited. I really enjoyed his work. I might have to just push my backlog away for Sea of Stars.

You're right about Mario RPG containing music from a composer who worked on Chrono Trigger. Mario RPG actually had more than one composer. Nobuo Uematsu and Yoko Shimomura.

Chrono Trigger was mostly composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, but several tracks were composed by Nobuo Uematsu.

I’d move it up the queue for sure. It’s so addictive. I play whenever I have free time. Sea of Stars is pretty much what I want if Chrono Trigger were made in 2023. Including unlockable gear items that let you progress like in Zelda games. Just got the grappling hook. Games are just better with grappling hooks.

TalonJedi87 wrote:
:) A friend of mine said something about grappling hooks just being awesome. I think it was in reference to Halo Infinite.

Sea of Stars was great as long as you don’t expect anything new - i guess elements of the battle system are technically speaking unique, maybe, or maybe I just haven’t played enough JRPGs, but other than that, it’s a beautifully, beautifully crafted love letter to something from our past that we think fondly of

Dying Light 2- 7/10

It’s what I expected it to be. Far Cry with zombies. Too many damn check boxes in the open world. I’m just sticking to the main story though and it has a pretty solid story and is brutal combat wise. The parkour feels fluent for the most part too. Reminds me of Mirror’s Edge a bit. It plays a lot more smoother than the first game which had a ton of bugs and performance issues from what I recall.

DrizzDrizzDrizz wrote:

That's a very good way to sum it up, at least for me.

Sorry in advance for the long post, I''m going through more PSVR games so I've spent the past few days playing some racing games.

Gran Turismo SPORT {} 6/10
I'm not too big on racing sims, so I don't really care for the Gran Turismos and Forzas, Need For Speed and Mario Kart are more my style. So that's why 6 years after getting this game bundled with my PSVR headset I've only just now finally opened it, and that's because I've heard they are shutting the servers down next month and a bunch of the game won't be playable anymore.

Well then, imagine my surprise when I come to find out that only a small (and I mean small) portion of this game is even playable in VR. There is a showroom mode where you can look at 3D models of the cars, a basic race mode where you can race against a whopping ONE CPU driver (there's no option to race against others online, or even race locally with someone using the TV), and a Time Trial mode where from what I can tell the best times list is separate from when you do Time Trial mode in non-VR. Like, what made them think this was the ideal game to bundle with the headset then? That was a stupid decision and in my opinion was just a waste of a bundle, and if I knew that then I would have just left it unopened because that's the sole reason I had any interest in playing it at all. My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined. Nah but seriously, it was a waste of time to even open this because the real meat of the game is the non-VR modes, and I'm already currently playing a non-VR racing game (Need For Speed Heat) and I'm enjoying that one more, so I won't be investing much more time into this one. From what I have played though, if you are into the Gran Turismo series that 6/10 doesn't apply to you, I don't see why you wouldn't enjoy this one as much as the other games in the series. But as someone who expected more from this game's VR integration, it's pretty disappointing. I hope they did it right in Gran Turismo 7.

The soundtrack also is nothing special. I like racing games, but I don't consider myself a "car guy", so having a good soundtrack is kinda important to me because I want to hear more than just the sounds of brakes squeaking and engines roaring.

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WipEout Omega Collection {} 8/10
Like Gran Turismo above, this game is playable without VR too, but I don't want to play it that way because unlike Gran Turismo this game offers the entire game playable in VR. And now that I've played this in VR, there is no going back to the flat mode.

With how fast everything moves in this game you would think it would be easy to get motion sickness. And while I'm sure some people still will get motion sickness regardless, they did a pretty good job in this game of trying to avoid that by making it more comfortable for VR players. They have certain comfort settings enabled for each track in the game and you can't disable them until you've played each track once with them on. There were also several times where i was ready to wrap it up and stop playing, but kept getting sucked back in with the feeling of "just one more race", something I wasn't feeling in Gran Turismo.

Surprisingly the online servers are still active, but there's just not many people playing. I did find 6 or 7 people playing when I searched on the EU servers, but they were much better at the game than I am, so I only stuck around for a couple of races.
This is a series I've never been good at, but still enjoyed the few entries I've played. I hope they're working on something new for PSVR2.

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TrackMania Turbo {} 7/10
Again, like the two games above this has a VR mode and flat mode. I don't care much about the flat mode, but I did play some of it just to compare what's available in VR and what isn't. It's a fun experience in VR, but there's not enough to it. You basically get a time trial mode with 40 tracks to race on, which might sound like a lot, but they're fairly easy and basic tracks that last anywhere from 15-45 seconds each and took no time at all to get the gold star ranking on all of them (granted gold star isn't the highest ranking in this game, but it's good enough for me). This series is popular more for the user-created tracks, but you can't play those in VR. In fact the VR mode in general just feels like an afterthought (and it probably was, I think the patch that added the VR mode came months after the game released), but I still appreciate that they even added it. I was surprised that for a 2016 release there were still 5 or 6 lobbies online with people playing and like with WipEout I was the only American player.

The graphics are alright and everything runs smooth and that's the important part (especially in VR, you'd get a migraine otherwise). You can't manually select a dashboard view like I prefer for VR games, but the game will automatically switch to one when needed, like when driving through a tunnel or up a wall for example. I have my VR legs, but when driving up walls and stuff it almost knocked me for a loop when I was playing standing up, so I had to sit down to continue and it was much better, but still can feel a little funky once in a while. One track in particular that has you going upside down had me feeling like I was on a legit roller coaster, I thought I was gonna have to close my eyes until it ended but then I wouldn't be able to see where I'm steering. It got me way more than WipEout did, which surprised me. Just as a little experiment I think it would be funny (and cruel) to use this game to pop the cherry of a friend or relative that hasn't played VR before.

I saw TrackMania was listed under VR for the sale, and was considering it, but it doesn't sound like it's worth it just for VR. I still have to get around to WipEout. I've had it for years.

Wipeout Omega on PSVR1 was one of my favorites. Somehow I was way better at it in VR.

DCGX wrote:


If you have PS+ Extra it's available in the Ubisoft section of games. I assume it was given away to regular tier PS+ subscribers years ago and that's how it got in my game library. WipEout probably was given to PS+ subscribers too and for some reason you can't even purchase it digitally anymore.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

I only have the Essential tier, and I'm letting that run out. If Trackmania was a PS+ title, I never redeemed it. I have WipEout physicall and from PS+. That's weird it isn't available digitally anymore. Were there any licenses?

DCGX wrote:

A lot of the music for sure was licensed

The Crew Motorfest (PS5) - 7/10 - After more time with this it's ok but not great. The narrative leads you to do Playlists which is a set of races scattered of some theme all over the map (Japanese iconic cars, drift cars, muscle cars, offroad, etc.). But it always give you specific cars to use during each race so just doing the playlists it has been leading me to has netted me like $1M with no need to buy any cars yet. But I also don't know how I can buy them.

AI - is all over the place. When you use nitrous they don't all immediately go as fast as you like in NFS. You can boost past the pack if you save it up and find a good straight. But then they boost in odd ways to catch you and I seem to get rammed in the back far too often.

Also, since the playlists have you all over the map I'm now just immediately switching to the plane mode and flying to where I need to be instead of driving since it's quicker. That's really cool to do but it makes me avoid the optional tasks and things I suspect it wanted me to see (and be distracted by) on the way.

Audio - is really good. Controller vibrates with variety and it's speaker does some nice car sounds, plus the music tracks are WAY better than FH5.

It's a good game but nothing great. For $30 on sale it's decent.

benstylus wrote:

There ya go then.

Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul {} 7/10
Pretty sure I bought this on sale at Best Buy all the way back in 2018, back when GCU was a thing (RIP). I think it was pretty cheap rather than it being something I was just itching to play, so that's why it took so long to open it.

Two things I want to mention. First, I like that as soon as you begin the game you won't see a single damn loading screen. Second, the game claims to have "randomized jump scares", so if you play through it more than once you won't always know what to expect. I actually found the second playthrough to be less scary though, like there were fewer jump scares this time or something. However I feel like some of the jump scares were spoiled by the auto=save icon that appears on-screen now and then. Once you see it, you know something is about to happen.

I'm playing on PS5 which gives it the visual benefits of a PS4 Pro, and the graphics are pretty good. But the character models in particular look not-so-good. And you'll find letters throughout the house, but the text is like a blurry mess until you hold the paper at just the right distance and angle.

The 3D audio is pretty good too. Like, hearing certain sound effects and whispering voices, this just would not have sounded nearly as good if I was using the TV speakers. And it made the jump scares that much better.

As for the controls, I played through this game once with the PS Move controllers, and then started a new playthrough for around 20 minutes using the DualShock 4 before ultimately restarting the game and going back to using the PS Move. Overall the PS Move controllers were just okay and I did run into some issues. For example, one section of the game, maybe around the halfway mark, you have to do some satanic ritual thing and place coins on a table forming like a pentagram shape. Well...I dropped a coin on the floor and it was way more difficult than it should've been trying to pick it back up, because when I'd bend down to reach for it the PlayStation Camera would lose track of the PS Move controller. I had to keep recalibrating again and again with the Start button until I lucked out and somehow tricked the camera into thinking I was crouching and was able to reach the coin. I had to do this two other times with items that I needed to pick up off the floor (in both playthroughs). Also, at times I'd still get the movement buttons mixed up (which turn left and right, or move forward and backwards). I dunno man, I'll be getting PSVR2 in a few weeks and one of the biggest things I'm looking forward to is hopefully the death of that "click turning" nonsense.

For the game's length, my first playthrough was almost precisely 2½ hours and that includes probably 10-15 minutes wasted in the beginning not knowing what to do or where to go (that would happen a couple other times throughout the playthrough as well). My second playthrough was an hour shorter, and that included probably 25 minutes of me being lost and not remembering where to find one important item from my previous playthrough. I'm not even going to complain about the length, I'm just going to finally accept that the majority of VR games will never be the length of AAA games (excluding the ones that are AAA games like RE8, RE4, GT7 etc.). That's just the way it is. But what I will complain about is the game's ending. I don't know how many endings there are, but the one I got sucked. And I got the same ending in both playthroughs even though I chose a different path for each of them.

TL;DR It's not the greatest VR horror game, but it slightly exceeded my somewhat low expectations. However I've never watched any of the Paranormal Activity movies and this game didn't really convince me that I should. Also, at some point this game had gotten patched so that you can play it without VR now, but just like RE 7 and RE 8 I'll never play it that way.

Holy crap, I just noticed this thread turned 20 years old today. It has to be the longest running thread on the site.

I think it's only competition was the last game you beat thread, and that one is from 2005.

I also checked the Amazon commission thread in site feedback and it's a comparative baby having been started in 2010

Powerwash Simulator - Downloaded this on a whim because it's the PS+ monthly game and thought "Meh, something to keep my hands busy while I watch sports or listen to music". Turns out, I must be the target audience for a game like this. It's so addicting and satisfying that I can't put it down. My girlfriend thinks I've lost my mind

Need For Speed: Heat {} 8/10

So far this has turned out a bit better than I was expecting. Usually I crap on NFS story modes, but this one might be the only one I didn't outright dislike since NFS: The Run, which was over a decade ago.
I did have mixed feelings about the way the game's events are seperated between day and night time, but after enough time I've grown to like it. I kinda wish in the beginning I had spent more time playing at night to earn reputation faster instead of playing during the day to earn money. The game also just looks a bit nicer at night too.

Another thing about the NFS games I usually crap on is the soundtrack. This game has a few bangers though, but I wish there were more of them. I don't see a way to disable certain songs in the options menu, or even how to skip a song once it starts playing. But there's a few songs I like and that help make the races feel more intense when their bass is pounding in the headphones, especially with the binaural option enabled. I can't think of any other game I've played that supports the 3D audio feature that had featured licensed music and made it sound better. But again, ideally I wish I could disable every other song besides those few that I feel add to the experience. The few songs I do like only seem to play at night.

I remember when I first got my PlayStation 4, one of the first games I bought was Need For Speed: Rivals. In-between races and making progress in the campaign, I enjoyed just driving around the map listening to the other players chit chat, some maybe not even realizing their mic was on. Despite this game having cross-platform multiplayer so PlayStation, Xbox and PC users are driving around the map together, I've never heard a peep from anyone. Also all the activity seems to take place on one portion of the map. I barely ever see anyone driving on the western side.

Overall I feel this actually might be the best Need For Speed of last-gen (not counting the Hot Pursuit Remaster). There's lots to do as far as events to participate in, and plenty of collectibles to find if you care enough for that (I'm getting a bit tired of the whole crashing through billboards gimmick though, it's time to come up with something new).

Superhot VR {} 7/10

Never before has one game made me feel like such a badass...even though I totally suck at it. I feel like this is one of those games that VR was made for, that's how good it is (and that's weird to say because it originally released as a non-VR game). The game is a blast, I like the whole "time only moves when you move" gimmick, but honestly I just don't see myself completing this one. The controls work well majority of the time, but it's just those once in a while moments where they don't (particularly with items that you can only throw) that is the problem. They just don't throw where I want them to. Shooting where you want to is also tricky at times, but at least guns have more than one bullet, so you don't only get one chance with them. I feel like I might need to revisit this game at a later time, or if it gets brought to PSVR2, but until then I'm going to move on to something else.

Inscryption 8/10

A relative of mine has been recommending this game to me for a long time. The other month I took a look in the eShop. It was on sale (11.99). Had some leftover eShop credit anyway, so I bought it.

It's fun. It's card based, and similar in style to Slay the Spire. It has borderline horror vibes, but it isn't horror.

There's some light humor too.

So far it's pretty good.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

I really enjoyed this one. Checking Xbox I put in 39h in that version (none of it multiplayer). I recently started it up on PS5 and had some fun but it felt far too familiar given how much time I put into it last time.


Crew Motorfest stands out to me for this reason. With the 3d headset the audio really elevates the experience. You can't skip specific songs but you can change stations. It's not as good of a game as NFS Heat but the music selection is far better than I've heard in games recently.

Super Amazeballs {} 7/10

image
Everyone remembers these things as kids. But now it's in VR, and by default that just makes it cooler, because everything is cooler in VR. I'm only half joking. It actually is a pretty fun game...while it lasts. The problem is it's just short and with little replay value. There are only 25 levels and I'm already at level 19 with less than 90 minutes of playtime. And there are only 6 trophies, 5 of which I had unlocked in less than a half hour (the final one is for completing all levels).

The graphics...are not what you'd play a game like this for, but they still are pretty lackluster. You'll spend the whole time focused on the maze in front of you and navigating the marble to the goal anyway, so you probably won't even notice the one single static image displayed in the background that's the same across every stage,

For the audio, the game's listing in the PlayStation Store mentions a "deep soundtrack created by Honsoneous". I don't know who Honsoneous is, but I didn't care for the music very much and after around 5 levels or so I had turned the music off completely and just listened to the sound of the marble traveling through the maze.

The controls are pretty good. Any failures where the marble would fall off the track, I never felt like it was the fault of the controls or the camera losing track of the PS Move ball thingies. The marble physics are good too.

Overall I wish there was just a little more to the game. Maybe a user-created maze maker mode or something, and they can be shared online. That could be kinda cool, though I don't know how big of an audience a game like this would attract anyway. Despite the short length, I will say that the developers at least did it right by only charging you $5 for it. I've played plenty of VR games that were as short as this but still cost 5x or 6x more. I can at least say I feel like I got my $5 worth out of it, because there just ain't a whole lot you can do with only $5 these days.

Anxiouz wrote:


I think it was a nice improvement over the previous one (Payback, I think). I also didn't play any of it in multiplayer other than driving around the map while connected online. There were a few peeps that would crash into me and then speed away when I was first starting out, I guess their way of bullying me for being the noob or something, but other than that it felt like everyone was just doing their own thing and not really interacting with one another.

I have NFS Unbound to play next, but I've heard it's not as good as Heat was, so it's not a high priority at the moment.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

Damn my 9yr old is obsessed with these sorts of things. He has a perplexis ball coming for Christmas. If I could get him to use VR he'd be all over that.

Arca's Path {} 5/10

The best way to describe this game is it's so far the closest thing to a Super Monkey Ball in VR that we've gotten yet. Unfortunately it is just nowhere near as fun and it lacks any of the charm of Super Monkey Ball.

The game is played entirely with the HMD and the ball thingy will roll in the direction you're looking/tilting you head. The only time you will need to use a controller is if you need to pause the game, or to push down on the TouchPad to be able to freely look around and observe the environment without having the ball follow where you're looking. This method of control actually works pretty well and is probably the best thing about the game and will make it easily accessible for anyone.
It's everything else about the game that is pretty lame, and that goes for the graphics, soundtrack and the story. The story is told through still images and I don't know what they're trying to tell nor do I feel that a game like this would even have a story worth following. The graphics and music are both dull. The music I just didn't like at all, and the graphics just have very little variety with most levels looking the same as the one before it.

I haven't finished this yet, but I've put an hour into it so far and I don't expect it to take much more than another hour or so before I'll be seeing the credits roll because there are only 25 levels and they've so far not offered any bit of challenge yet. I'll finish it up after dinner, but unless there are some significant changes in the second half of the game I don't expect my opinion will have changed at all.

Shady Part of Me {} 8/10

I bought this a few years ago after seeing the trailer and it's pretty much exactly what I expected to get from it, and what I wanted from it. A 2.5D puzzle/platformer that acts like a single player co-op game. What I mean by that is you are playing as two girls, one human and the other a shadowy-like figure, and you switch between them to help each other get through the levels. For example the human girl doesn't like light, so as the shadow girl you might have to pull some levers that will adjust some things to create shaded areas so she can get through. All while you are playing a story is unfolding and being written out in the background and occasionally narrated. If at any point you die you hold the ZR button to rewind and go right back where you were. Now don't get me wrong, the game itself, the concept is not exactly unique and it has been done before, it's just that with the current state of the indie game scene today with 50 roguelikes and "[insert mundane activity here] Simulator 2023" releasing every week, this still manages to feel like a freaking breath of fresh air despite not being original itself.

I have not beaten the game yet, I'm almost 3 hours into it and I don't even think I'm halfway done yet, so that as well feels like an improvement over a lot of other indie games of this style lately. After 2 hours of playing most of them I'd probably be looking at the end credits by now. From what I have played so far I really don't have much to complain about. As far as the graphics, I really dig the artstyle, and the controls and audio are just fine. The puzzles as well are good. Some have stumped me for a bit but it never reached the point where I was ready to give up and look at a walkthrough.

That game sounds similar to Tandem: A Tale of Shadows.

BloodPuppetX wrote:


Pretty sure this was recently given free on Epic Games Store. I'm gonna have to play that next then.

Started up Bug Fables on PS4. Definitely a rip off of paper mario, but it's good so far!

Shadow of the Tomb Raider - 7/10 - The weakest of the trilogy but it still had some fun tombs, pretty good gameplay, and nice graphics.