Whatcha Been Playing?

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Scrustle
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Scrustle »

Angry_Kurt wrote: July 2nd, 2020, 12:12 pm To what degree can you customise the aesthetics of the car?
You can do a lot, depending on the car. It's probably the best feature of the game. But say if you have something like a Japanese tuner car, you have a wide variety of body parts to choose from on practically every panel of the car. Bumpers, skirts, spoilers, overfenders, wheels, diffusers, etc. You can even mix different front and rear overfenders from different wide body kits. The painting tool is really in depth too, with loads of control over the style and finish, and complex livery editor that easily lets you download designs from the community too. And you can even tweak stuff like the exact camber of your wheels and the sound of the exhaust note. It is pretty impressive, so I don't knock it for these features, but I personally find it hard to care much when actually driving the cars isn't much fun. It's not a great feeling when you spend a long time getting your car look exactly how you like, only to then find out actually using it is awful. Fully building a car is quite expensive too. I wouldn't say it's bad enough to make the game feel grindy, but if you want to have multiple cars fully built how you want, you will have to go out of your way with races to save up enough.
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Angry_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Angry_Kurt »

Sounds really good, like how deep the customisation was on the PS2 Need for Speed games. Shame about the core racing being not so good, otherwise I might have given it a go.
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dezm0nd
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by dezm0nd »

The Messenger

Was really enjoying it but then it took a twist and I found it took the wind out my sails. Might come back later, might not. Started off a really fun 2d platformer, though.

Minecraft Dungeons

Really enjoying this Diablo-lite. It seems extremely short but the DLC is reasonably priced and just got updated with some new bells and whistles. Good fun.

Amid Evil

Another throwback FPS but this time taking cues from Hexen. It's got really intricate level design and is really fun to blast through them. I am really impressed by the recent run of modern-retro FPS games and this definitely sits up there with DUSK
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Mr Ixolite
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Mr Ixolite »

Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy (Switch)
This game passed me by in the PS2 era, but I was always dimly aware of it due to my overall platformer obsession. Now I picked it up for free at the library a few weeks ago and...I'm kinda glad I didn't spring for a copy bad in the day, as my interest has quickly waned. It isn't so much that its bad, theres just several things that put me at arms length.

Firstly, the main leads are incredibly bland. I'm generally no fan of silent protagonists, but I can deal with them in platformers where the narrative aspect is usually limited, and where they often get a ton of personality or charm through their design, or animations. No such luck here.

Secondly, the lack of voice acting throws me off. This is again something I can usually deal with if the presentation of the story is somehow abstracted- like, i love the textboxes of final fantasies <10 - but here the cinematography and the character animation of the cutscenes seem to beg for voices. Its like watching a cartoon set on mute, and it again makes things just a bit more bland.

Finally, I get that the games egyptian setting confers certain limitations, but eventually the visuals just became too samey for me. In terms of color, architechture, and overall design, areas quickly felt...bland.

These things are maybe not the most integral aspects of a platformer/3D action game, but when the combat and puzzling are just sort of OK, the game could've really used a Charm factor to prop it up. As is the game is like a rice cracker: Certainly edible, but no flavor.
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andthenweplay
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by andthenweplay »

For the first time in 5 years I started replaying Fatal Frame III: The Tormented on PlayStation 2. I kind of wish I had a CRT because the game looks stunning even for a game 15 years old. The character models and environments are very nice looking and the frame rate seems very tight. I used to play this game every year or two back in the day but being only about 2 or 3 hours in I can say the game still oozes with atmosphere and some genuinely terrifying scenes. I am excited to jump back in once my kids go to bed
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stvnorman
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by stvnorman »

Having sold my original copy for a lot more almost 10 years ago, I bought Split Second Velocity on PS3 again for less than the cost of the postage, and it’s still wonderful! Also still looks stunning, and the gameplay is still glorious, chaotic fun!

Somehow fallen back into another old favourite, Virtua Racing on Switch. Took a while to get the consistency back, but set a new best on Big Forest, which is a very big deal to me!

Also got P-47 on Switch this week. Loved the 8-bit versions, but first time playing the original and it doesn’t disappoint, especially that glorious sunset behind the second level!
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Scrustle
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Scrustle »

Always glad to see Split/Second getting some love. That game deserved better than it got. A sequel to refine things would have been great.

Minor update on NFS Heat. Did yet more tweaking with the drift controls and managed to get it in a usable state, but it's still pretty poor. With my other cars just for normal grip racing, I pushed the steering sensitivity up to max to try and make them feel responsive, but that turned out to actually be bad for drifting. That was the reason it made cars just swing way too tightly in to a drift. So dialing that back made it a bit more controllable, to the point where I can get round a corner, but it still doesn't feel good. There's still a lack of inertia to the drift, and there's a feeling that you just can't predict how your car will react to inputs, and you barely have any control over your line through a corner. It doesn't feel smooth or satisfying at all, or like I'm actually in control of what the car is doing. The drifting in NFS Carbon is leagues better, and even that was a pretty awkward system until you worked out how it worked.

And on the topic of racing games, I also dropped back in to Test Drive Unlimited 2 in light of a sequel finally appearing on the horizon. I did try playing the first again, but both of these games nowadays are pretty temperamental on whether they're going to let you play them on any given day. I still can't help but have a fondness for this game though. It scratches an itch that no other games do, even if as actual racing games they aren't great. Handling is stiff, and AI is bad, but that's not the thing that draws me in. It kind of reminds me of what I used to like about Oblivion way back in the day. How you can just point yourself in a direction and go for hours, taking in the atmosphere. So much space to explore, and it manages to create a really nice aesthetic mood, even if sometimes it can feel a bit like quantity over quality. Still enough quality there, and it's not quite like anything else. It's the best game for just aimlessly driving for the sake of it. Really hoping TDU3 can capture that again. The Crew games were supposed to be sort of the spiritual successor to these games, but because of the setting and tone they go for, they could never recreate that feeling. The Forza Horizon games do a much better job, but they're going for something somewhat different, and have much smaller worlds.

I also spent some time listening back to the TDU1 soundtrack as well. That was such a great soundtrack, that was a big part of the atmosphere. While the music itself wasn't the greatest it just fit the tone of the game so well. And I guess there's the nostalgia factor too of having had those tracks drilled in to my mind hour after hour playing that game. That's one thing that game did better than the sequel.

Also still very slowly chipping away at Yakuza 5. Got past Saejima's section and in to Haruka. This is the point I quit the game for several months first time playing. But I'm coming at it a bit differently this time. Back on the PS3 I played all of Saejima's hunting side-game, and skipped as much of Haruka's stuff as possible, because by that point I was getting really tired of the bloat and didn't like how much of a departure Haruka was both in terms of gameplay and story. This time I skipped Saejima's stuff, and am digging more in to Haruka's, and I'm enjoying her stuff more this time around. Saejima's section really is a massive drag. Doing that long prison section when they already did the same thing in 4, and then railroading you in to the mountain village stuff before you get anywhere. Did not care for it this time. Once you actually get to his more traditional city exploration parts with combat it's good again, and the improvements to his fighting style are fun too, being able to pick up people and swing them around in to other enemies. But skipping through his boring stuff has given me a bit more energy for Haruka. The rhythm minigame stuff is fun enough. I've heard this is basically a very simplified version of those Hatsune Miku games, and from what I've seen that seems to be accurate. So it's not too hard, but has some enjoyable moments.

Still chipping away at Gujian 3 as well. I'm still liking it, but I think I'm being forced to concede defeat on the performance problems. I don't think the issue is really with graphical load, but instead something that I can't really do much about. At least combat runs fine, but when moving around the world and exploring built up town areas, that's when it struggles to hold a good smooth frame rate. So I suppose the issue is streaming in assets, which I suspect is a CPU optimisation problem. But if the bits where fast and consistent inputs matter are fine, then I guess I can power through it. I'm also seeing loads of influence of The Witcher 3 in this game, but in a sort of surface level. You have a ping that highlights nearby items in a yellow glow, there's a quest board in the towns where quests are presented as paper fliers that NPCs have put up, and there's a card game that you can play with NPCs, and you get rare cards to add to your collection if you win against certain characters. So it seems this game is trying really hard to be like a Chinese Witcher 3. And if I'm honest, I like this card game way more than Gwent... Also I noticed in this game certain enemies don't die when you defeat them, but instead they just run off at the end of the fight. But it only seems to happen with enemies categories as animals. Is there some regulation/law in China saying you can't kill animals in games?
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Jon Cheetham
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Jon Cheetham »

The Watch out for Fireballs folks put out an episode on Hitman 2 (2018) so I ended up spending my free time on the weekend revisiting it. I always mean to just do one mission and then end up getting totally absorbed until I've fully mastered that location ... this time it was Santa Fortuna, I even did an inept suit-only run. Then did a bunch of special missions and the Patient Zero campaign for the first time, played Ghost Mode with my brother which is actually quite neat and different as it makes you focus on working quickly. This is a game I really have to get out of my system each time I fall into it, there's no such thing as just having a little nibble of it. Ended up putting off my NG+ playthrough for TLOU2 as a result.

I still have five locations left in Hitman 2 that I've only beaten once including the DLC, so that will more than keep me going until 3 is out in January. I can't wait to spend a weekend scouring the Maldives level, that one is a beaut.
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Angry_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Angry_Kurt »

I was a big fan of Test Drive Unlimited 1 without actually ever owning it, I just remember playing it on my friends PC at the time and it was very impressive. The thing that blew my mind at the time was that you could sit behind the wheel and see all the cars interiors, which I believe only the PC version had for some reason, as I rented the PS2 version and it didn't have that option.
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Scrustle
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Scrustle »

Angry_Kurt wrote: July 6th, 2020, 9:34 am I was a big fan of Test Drive Unlimited 1 without actually ever owning it, I just remember playing it on my friends PC at the time and it was very impressive. The thing that blew my mind at the time was that you could sit behind the wheel and see all the cars interiors, which I believe only the PC version had for some reason, as I rented the PS2 version and it didn't have that option.
The 360 version had that too.
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Angry_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Angry_Kurt »

Scrustle wrote: July 6th, 2020, 11:57 am
Angry_Kurt wrote: July 6th, 2020, 9:34 am I was a big fan of Test Drive Unlimited 1 without actually ever owning it, I just remember playing it on my friends PC at the time and it was very impressive. The thing that blew my mind at the time was that you could sit behind the wheel and see all the cars interiors, which I believe only the PC version had for some reason, as I rented the PS2 version and it didn't have that option.
The 360 version had that too.
Must have just been the limitations of the PS2 then
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shadowless_kick
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I recently started playing Celeste.

even though I'm at the very beginning, I'm starting to understand why it's held in such high regard. I love the fact that it's a platfomer in the absolutely purest sense of the term and that it doesn't hold your hand at all. going from "how is this even possible?" to "I did it!" so consistently is pretty cool. I'm not exactly thrilled with the story elements, but I can at least see the direct link between it and the actual gameplay.

frankly, after playing a handful of procedurely generated games in the recent past, it's refreshing to experience something that's been so meticulously designed/planned. also, this is the very first game that's made me even consider seeking out a speedrun video, as I imagine an expert playing this would be beautiful to behold.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

Just resumed my game of Bayonetta on Switch after breaking from it for a few weeks. I'd been stuck on a boss for a while but came back and did it second try. I have no idea who it was, but it was another human woman (rather than a monster) who had a move set similar to Bayonetta's.

There's a lot to love about this game, the combat is excellent fun and so many moves to master, but I would like a bit more location and enemy variety. Also I still have literally no fucking clue what's going on, but I can turn in to a dog now, so that's cool I guess... :lol:

Also confused as to what left trigger does. It seems to change my guns from A set to B set, but no idea what the difference is, if any.
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Scrustle
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Alex79uk wrote: July 6th, 2020, 2:02 pm
Also confused as to what left trigger does. It seems to change my guns from A set to B set, but no idea what the difference is, if any.
That changes what weapons you are using. Once you unlock more, you can equip two sets of weapons at once, each set allowing a weapon equipped on arms and legs.

You unlock weapon by collecting the gold LPs and taking them to Rodin's shop. Some are easy to spot, placed along the main path, but others are hidden away somewhat, so you'll need to do a bit of exploring. With such a linear game though, they're not that hard to find.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

So one of the games coming to PS Now this month is Watch Dogs 2. Anyone here want to champion it? I had downloaded Assassin's Creed Unity to play next having bought it ages ago (and slowly playing through the series) but I remember fancying Watch Dogs 2 a while back and seem to remember it being better received that the original. So, is it still worth playing? Might be good to get in before the new one comes out, I was thinking.
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Flabyo
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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For me it’s a far better game than the first one.

The original is all grimdark and ‘I must get revenge for my dead family!’ and so on, takes itself incredibly seriously. You’re basically hacker Batman in it, and it’s so po-faced.

The sequel has you as part of an anarchist hacker collective with the emphasis more on pranks and making statements. It still gets a little dark, but it’s not the driving force anymore. It’s more... fun, despite still having a solid message to tell.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Alex79 »

Flabyo wrote: July 8th, 2020, 8:39 am For me it’s a far better game than the first one.

The original is all grimdark and ‘I must get revenge for my dead family!’ and so on, takes itself incredibly seriously. You’re basically hacker Batman in it, and it’s so po-faced.

The sequel has you as part of an anarchist hacker collective with the emphasis more on pranks and making statements. It still gets a little dark, but it’s not the driving force anymore. It’s more... fun, despite still having a solid message to tell.
Thanks, yeah I did end up starting it last night and enjoyed the first 90 minutes or so, despite being quite confused. It throws so many systems at you from the get go, it's a bit overwhelming! And getting the missions off your phone I'm not overly keen on as I'm never sure exactly whether I'm doing the main story or a side quest. I think I've got it figured in that you have to do side stuff to gain followers in order to unlock the next main mission...?
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Flabyo »

Pretty much. You can ignore the online ones if you want though, once you’ve got past the one it makes you do.
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by ReprobateGamer »

Tried out No Man's Sky a few nights ago as it's available on Game Pass. It starts well enough but I lost interest at the point where I'm required to build a base.

I was interested in having a game where I could fly across the universe, exploring at my leisure but I have to say that having to farm resources to construct a base is the point where I started to lose interest.

Though talking of games with a grind, my main game at the moment is Assassin's Creed: Origins. Started playing this when it came out and lost interest in the second or third area, other than the odd knock about in the Discovery Tour.

So picking up where I left off, I've set myself the challenge of completing all the quests in an area before moving on, though I'm not including having to tick off every single collection item. I'm somewhere around the forty hour mark and I reckon I've uncovered half the map at this point. Combat still feels a little stilted, though I think at least some of that is me getting used to the pace of battle. There are some stunning moments in this game though.
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stvnorman
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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ReprobateGamer wrote: July 9th, 2020, 5:46 pm Tried out No Man's Sky a few nights ago as it's available on Game Pass. It starts well enough but I lost interest at the point where I'm required to build a base.
I adored this game for well over a hundred hours when it came out. Then the big updates started appearing to fix all the problems I didn’t have... like lack of bases!I’m 100% with you. I fell off very quickly once bases appeared.
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