Alex79uk wrote: ↑February 16th, 2020, 8:51 am
I'm currently on a very slow play through of the entire series. I've got to start and finish Unity first, but I'm really looking forward to Syndicate.
Nice! I also like Unity a lot. Paris is just incredible to explore. It's like being there (despite the guards having British accents, haha)
Ah, I always play in local language with subs (if option exists). Made Renaissance Italy a lot more authentic!
Finished Bioshock on PS4 from this month’s PS+ offering. It was good, motion-sickness aside, but didn’t blow me away and I’m on the fence about whether or not to give the sequels in the collection a go.
Last year’s Demon’s Tilt on Xbox is firmly in my top 15 games of all time, and I’ve now got its PC-Engine predecessor, Devil’s Crush, running perfectly on my newly hacked PS Classic. It might not be quite as polished by modern standards, but it still looks and sounds brilliant, and its multi-screen occult pinball plays like a dream once you get a feel for everything that’s going on. And given the hours I’ve spent playing it over the weekend I’ve certainly done that!
And speaking of top 15 games of all time, I’ve only spent slightly fewer hours playing Destruction Derby 2 on there. The graphics haven’t aged too badly compared to other PS1 racers, but it still controls well, and the chaos and unpredictability is still unsurpassed!
DomsBeard wrote: ↑February 16th, 2020, 9:14 am
Sorted Nvidea Geforce now to see how it holds up vs Stadia and to play Disco Elysium on my Mac.
Interesting without being blown away so far. I think you need mouse and keyboard to play it optimally so glad I picked it up before waiting for the console ports.
Cool. Never heard of that service before. Might give it a go. I'm also quite keen on trying out that game. What speed connection do you have?
Minimum 40 at home and it worked on my Mac at work whose Internet isn't as strong
DomsBeard wrote: ↑February 16th, 2020, 9:14 am
Sorted Nvidea Geforce now to see how it holds up vs Stadia and to play Disco Elysium on my Mac.
Interesting without being blown away so far. I think you need mouse and keyboard to play it optimally so glad I picked it up before waiting for the console ports.
Cool. Never heard of that service before. Might give it a go. I'm also quite keen on trying out that game. What speed connection do you have?
Minimum 40 at home and it worked on my Mac at work whose Internet isn't as strong
Cheers. I just signed up and played a few minutes of Paths of Exile. My connection is meant to be 50mbps but it's averaging 35. Even so, it was playing mostly fine. If it's a cheap and cheerful way of playing the likes of Disco Elysium at a decent level of performance then it's a runner.
Hopefully a super-fast connection is imminent. My neighbours, directly across the street from me, have a rock solid 200mbps connection that's not available to me, just 100 feet away! So frustrating.
DomsBeard wrote: ↑February 16th, 2020, 9:14 am
Sorted Nvidea Geforce now to see how it holds up vs Stadia and to play Disco Elysium on my Mac.
Interesting without being blown away so far. I think you need mouse and keyboard to play it optimally so glad I picked it up before waiting for the console ports.
Cool. Never heard of that service before. Might give it a go. I'm also quite keen on trying out that game. What speed connection do you have?
Minimum 40 at home and it worked on my Mac at work whose Internet isn't as strong
Cheers. I just signed up and played a few minutes of Paths of Exile. My connection is meant to be 50mbps but it's averaging 35. Even so, it was playing mostly fine. If it's a cheap and cheerful way of playing the likes of Disco Elysium at a decent level of performance then it's a runner.
Hopefully a super-fast connection is imminent. My neighbours, directly across the street from me, have a rock solid 200mbps connection that's not available to me, just 100 feet away! So frustrating.
I tried both Disco Elysium and Kingdom Come: Deliverance via wired connection. Both are playing fine although at 32-35kbps I'd guess they're at 720p (I don't have a great eye for resolution).
I was particularly impressed with the latter game. Everything set to Very High and mostly coming in at 55+fps. Overall It looks and performs much better than both console releases. It's quite an odd feeling seeing the game playing on my rickety, 8 year old Macbook.
It's a cool piece of tech. Thanks again for bringing it to my attention.
I know I'm posting this like every other week, but I feel kind of shmupped out at the moment. I think some change of scenery might be in order. I've been putting off my Death Stranding playthrough for an embarrassingly long chunk of time, so I should probably get on that as soon as possible and redeem my fanboy honor. Not to mention that sweeeeet 60fps Vanquish action lurking just around the corner, ready to rocket slide into my life and discombobulate me in *check notes*... less than 48 hours!!
I made a point to boot up DMC3 and grab a couple of random S ranks to remind me of the meaning of life. I've also dipped my talon into the Metal Slug: Input Lag Collection and it's pretty cool, it turns out.
PS: All that damn phantom clicking is legit messing up my sleep cycle. Devil's Contraption, wish I'd never bothered.
Alex79uk wrote: ↑February 16th, 2020, 8:51 am
I'm currently on a very slow play through of the entire series. I've got to start and finish Unity first, but I'm really looking forward to Syndicate.
Nice! I also like Unity a lot. Paris is just incredible to explore. It's like being there (despite the guards having British accents, haha)
Ah, I always play in local language with subs (if option exists). Made Renaissance Italy a lot more authentic!
I wish I'd thought of that!
Haha, I didn't even realise Nolan North played Desmond till I got to the third game!
I've been enjoying Mega Man X on the legacy collection for Switch. Only got three bosses left, but I'll admit I've consulted a guide to find a couple of the suit upgrades. It's good. The game is hard, but once you've got the run down it generally only takes a minute or so to actually reach the bosses, and if you know what you're doing they can be beaten within ~30 seconds each. The entire game could probably be beaten in about half an hour if you're good at it!
I'm gonna play Front Mission: Gun Hazard today and try and complete it this week. It's been on my backlog longer than any other game, and I wanna hear that amazing OST.
A considerable rotation for me at the moment and I'm absolutely loving it.
Groove Coaster Wai Wai Party!!!!
I may have mentioned this in passing but what a game this is. Such a satisfying challenge and the moment-to-moment gameplay is as fun and exhilarating as almost anything I can remember playing in recent years.
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
I'm at the last boss now after going back to this. I'd say it reminds me of Cuphead more than anything else, a deceptively gorgeous game with consistent difficulty spikes which require you to grind your way through. It's pretty frustrating and probably built to be so, but if you throw half an hour at any boss or level, you'll get it in the end. Not a glowing endorsement, I know, but I think it's a fair assessment. I've enjoyed my time with it as a whole but it's also telling that it's taken me since launch to get this far, approximately eight hours' worth of game.
Edit: I've just finished it! The last boss was as irritating as all the others and followed the same pattern of learning by repeated sudden deaths until you get the phase down, rinse and repeat. The prospect of me going back to mop up the secret exits and challenge world stuff is nil.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
This was my most played Switch game of last year and while I'd always intended to go back to see the story through with another House, it's taken me until the recent Expansion to dip my toe back in via NG+. It's as satisfying as ever, although I'm cranking my way through the social stuff this time around because the story is apparently identical until the halfway point. I do wish they'd made each run through completely distinct but I also understand why that would be tricky with the overlapping parallel narrative in the first half. My mate has also put nearly 170 hrs in and he's been badgering me to give the new stuff a go, so that's given me extra impetus. I may save the new Expansion House for a separate run, though. I'm really keen to check out Edelgard's story this time after seeing her from the Blue Lions perspective on my first run.
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore
This continues to delight. It's as much of a Persona game as I am interested in. I find the social stuff and time management gives me option paralysis in those games because I'm constantly aware of the paths I've been neglected for every decision I make, and I've little interest in replaying to see what tiny differences the other decision would have made. This streamlines all of that to a simple main story, some neat side story stuffy which is worthwhile and a few compact areas. It's all about the atmosphere and the gameplay. Will I finish it? I don't know. I've only ever finished one JRPG, and that was FF7...and that was last year despite starting it when I was still in school. Nevertheless, this has a good chance of being the second.
I've been after something similar to The Witness, so I tried The Spectrum Retreat last night. It's a 3D puzzle game involving colours and doors and you have to be the right hue to get through doors etc (doesn't really do it justice, it's a smart game), wrapped up in some conspiracy about the player character being trapped in some sort of AI run hotel.
The game is clearly good, but I didn't have the patience for it and bailed on the second of five floors of puzzles. If you enjoy stuff like Portal you might enjoy this, although I suspect the puzzles become more taxing than that game ever got.
I might just reinstall The Witness. I don't think anything else is going to top it for what it did.
I got this purely because of the John Wick films, which I recently binged, and its visuals which are stylised in a very cool way. Also, Lance Riddick and Ian McShane are back!
It is a tactical stealth action game where careful movement and positioning around enemies seems (at least so far) to be the key to clearing or just surviving each area. The boss fight I did was surprisingly very fun, and the priority-based battle system has room for some really gratifying Hail Mary moments (the boss character making the mistake of moving away from me so I could roll behind cover, grab a loaded gun having emptied my other one, and finish him off being a particular highlight). It captures the speed of the action in the movies really cleverly.
My only complaint is it is extremely stingy with healing items, and you can't just buy them between missions - your currency is spent on upgrades - so it seems the game wants me to re-do areas until I can get through them without a scratch, which isn't really how I play games. Let's see how far I get as I am all out of bandages now...
F1 ROC on the SNES is great, I really enjoy it and used to struggle towards the back end of the season when I was young, so going in with an older head is seeing me climb the standings.
There was a ROC2 which I think was JP only, so I have that to look at after this which is nice to know.
I've also been looking at Adams Family Values on the SNES again which is a nice little top down adventure game, similar to the Jurassic Park game on the same platform.
Then there's Final Fantasy 4 which I'm finding compelling and a nice change of pace.
Then I've gone back to Axiom Verge to give it another go after not really getting into it when it first came out and abandoned it. I've reached the stage where I put it down last time, so it's make or break time.
Then to fulfil the social side of things, I'm into the Division 2. We're doing an hour an night and casually chipping things off the to-do list and very much enjoying it.
Lots of cool things I'm enjoying at the moment and I feel like I'm in a great place at the moment with lots of choice and variety.
Looking forward to trading oranges and apples with everyone next month.
Suits wrote: ↑February 19th, 2020, 12:00 pmF1 ROC on the SNES is great, I really enjoy it and used to struggle towards the back end of the season when I was young, so going in with an older head is seeing me climb the standings.
I was several decades late to SNES and had never heard of this before, but have just watched some YouTube and it looks awesome. Definitely going to check that out!
Ratchet & Clank the 2002 original is an interesting one to go back to. Well, to play for the first time. I'd heard a lot of people say the remake is rubbish compared to this. But although the remakes story definitely suffers from being tied to the movie, I would still say it's far and away superior to the original. Not that it's bad, its just very very janky.
- There is no strafing. So essentially when you use a weapon, its incredibly awkward and easy to be hit back.
- Using weapons like the flamethrower means you have to sort it twist the analogue stick round and round to hit anything.
- Again, coming at it from the perspective of playing the remake first but the story is quite disconnected and vague, and again, weird.
Dreams. I haven't touched the creative suite yet and I don't think I will. But I've been enjoying the numerous and varied creations that are already on offer. It's best thought of as a platform, not a game, and it will be interesting to see how it survives into the future and encourages major projects. Surely it will have to be monetized in some way.
A fascinating element is the number of other intellectual properties that are popping up, from Sonic to Fallout. It could also prove to be a useful forum for those tie-in games that will just never happen in the real world. The Twin Peaks experience is very basic, just a room and some music, but it captures the twilight weirdness of the show. It also reminded me of Virginia, which itself was hugely indebted to David Lynch, so there's a pleasant feedback loop happening there.
There are a lot of what I would call conventional, arcade-type experiences, but I'm really interested in those half-drawn experimental spaces, like the above. The stuff that's only tangentially related to videogames and with little commercial appeal. That's what I love about the deeper end of itch.io and now Dreams is bringing that into our living rooms.
Suits wrote: ↑February 19th, 2020, 12:00 pmF1 ROC on the SNES is great, I really enjoy it and used to struggle towards the back end of the season when I was young, so going in with an older head is seeing me climb the standings.
I was several decades late to SNES and had never heard of this before, but have just watched some YouTube and it looks awesome. Definitely going to check that out!
As a pre-teen I was totally won over buy the animation of swapping out parts of the car and adjusting things to suit the circuit.
Also, the Championship is very much made up of the actual circuits, just without the verticality - so Spa is flat .
It’s a pretty fun little racer, very fulfilling to set a car up for twisties then take it flat.
American Truck Simulator is the game I didn't know I wanted.
The Steam reviews mostly follow a similar pattern. Mild curiosity leading to monotonous gameplay leading to tranquil enjoyment. You won't find it listed under 'role-playing games' however driving across California with Creedence playing on the radio is as total a roleplaying experience as I've ever had.
There's an involved haulage sim at the heart of the game however you can also just complete one-off jobs, travelling from A to B with either simple or detailed driving controls, which is what passes for difficulty. It's a game of simple pleasures. I played for 90 minutes earlier and the standout moments saw me negotiating a series of road works.
It reminds me a lot of Elite: Dangerous. It's not as deep or imaginative but the minute to minute process of checking your mirrors, overtaking correctly and watching your speed and route has the air of faux professionalism that makes Elite so satisfying. The achievement lies in the ritual, the feeling of work being done correctly.
It's the type of game I often chanced upon on Twitch where I'd watch some guy with a mock-cabin and driving wheel live out his humble dreams. It looked strange then and it feels strange now but it's a very compelling game and a useful tool for de-stressing.
I'm playing Kingdom Hearts II right now and certainly isn't grabbing me. Honestly, I'm a bit confused by it's lack of pull, considering how much I loved the first game. But, I suppose, there's probably a difference between playing these games at sixteen verses playing them at thirty-three.
Finished Castlevania: Circle of the Moon on Game Boy Advance, which only took me almost 20 years! Really enjoyable for the entire game, a really solid Castlevania, and just a remarkable achievement that it exists on that machine. Only gripe is the map never quite clicked - by the end I was still regularly referring to an online map, where with Symphony of the Night or Hollow Knight or Bloodstained, for example, I felt I knew every inch. Looking forward to seeing how the next two compare... then selling them because I understand they’re all worth a bit now!
Also finished Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on Game Pass. I actually beat the last boss by accident the other day (stumbled upon him and didn’t expect to win first time), but had a few bits of map left to mop up. Enjoyed it a lot in the end, but as I’ve said before, for me it’s just lacking the atmosphere that made Symphony of the Night so magical. I remembered to go back and find the hidden 8-bit Nightmare level afterwards too. Nice touch!
Started Castlevania: Lord of Shadows, also on Game Pass. Not sure how long I’ll hang around here - a few chapters in and it’s a very average God of War clone that’s way too heavy on uninteresting cutscenes.
On the side, still playing a lot of Demon’s Tilt, which is another Game Pass gem! And on the hacked PS Classic, I’m getting well into it’s PC Engine predecessor Devil’s Crush. Also finished my first season of SNES F1 RoC which is running beautifully on there, and is a joy to play - thanks Suits!
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