Whatcha Been Playing?

[Truk_Kurt]

Started God of War Ragnorak last week and 5 hours in it hasn't really blown my socks off. It's good but it still feels like the previous game so far, not really taking anything up a notch quite yet. I'm playing this shortly after playing God of War 2018 at the end of last year on PS5 and I honestly can't tell a difference between them graphically. I know Ragnorak is on PS4 too but I was still expecting at least a slight step up from 2018 graphically. Still looks great mind. I remember the TCGS lads saying the first few hours are pretty ordinary though before it steps things up, so I'm still hopeful.

[Magical_Isopod]

I gave the Sea of Stars demo a whirl.

Great music, amazing visuals, interesting gameplay mechanics that seem fun to play.

Dialogue is absolutely awful. It's ostensibly the worst kind of American "dork" humour that western indie games cannot seem to purge. It genuinely feels like it was written for a Newgrounds video in 2004. It's that bad.

And it's a shame too, because so much of this game feels incredibly well made. But an RPG with bad writing is kind of a lost cause... I'll wait for reviews, but that demo completely killed my hype.

[Scrustle]

So I’ve been playing Splatoon 3 for a couple of months now, and tomorrow is the day the new season starts, so I thought now would be a good time to do a follow-up on my time with it since, as the honeymoon period is over.

I somehow forgot to talk about Salmon Run in my older posts, but it’s a mode I have been spending quite a lot of time doing that. It’s really fun, as it was in the last game, but it still feels like it needs a bit more to it. It’s pretty much the same as in Splat 2, but with some tweaks and additions. It has a bunch of new bosses and a couple of new stages. All the old bosses return too, and the new ones are generally good additions as well. They’re all pretty distinct and have their own methods for dealing with them. The stage selection feels a bit underwhelming though. There aren’t that many of them, and half of them are returning from the last game. None of them feel like they’re doing anything especially new either. They’re not bad to play on or anything (except in some scenarios), but I’d really like some more variety, which I assume will come over time. Another tweak which appears small at first but actually makes quite a big difference is that you can now throw golden eggs that you are carrying. It frees you from having to go back and forth from the basket over and over, and lets you pass them between teammates, and do a bunch of cool trick shots if you’re clever with them. There’s also a new category of boss, King Salmonids, that only appear as a bonus round in certain conditions. They’re basically huge kaiju things that you need to fire eggs at to defeat. It’s a cool set piece and a fun new challenge, but sometimes it feels like they are simply too big for the stage, especially during high tide where the stage becomes really small. They’re really hard to defeat, and in just over two months of playing, I’ve only beaten it four times. And even that number is inflated by half of them coming from a special rotation where they gave players unique overpowered weapons. There’s only a single type of King Salmonid right now, but they’re adding in a new one in the new season, so I’m looking forward to seeing that. The mode in general does seem harder than in the last game too. Not just because of having more bosses with unfamiliar behaviour, but simply in terms of how much stuff it throws at you at once. It can get very chaotic very quickly.

As for the competitive modes, I’ve still been plugging away at that, and while I’m still liking it a lot, some issues have become apparent after getting more familiar with the game. After my early success climbing up the ranks I ended up hitting a really stiff difficulty spike that halted my progress and has been pretty frustrating at times. I shot up to S rank with little trouble, but once I got there I hit a brick wall, and I was stuck in a rut for a while. Just losing all the time, going in to negative points, as this game won’t let you de-rank via losses. I managed to get out of that though and had a hot streak all the way up to almost ranking up again, but despite multiple shots at it, I could never do it. I was only a single win away at one point. Since then I’ve been yo-yoing up and down the rank, without being able to make any progress stick. Sometimes things go well, and I feel really in tune with the game and like I’ve made real improvement at it. Other times it feels like I just can’t do anything and the game is working against me all the time. I feel like it’s at least part down to how the weird rank decay system works. Because it forces everyone to lose rank each seasonal reset, there are quite a lot of people who have achieved S+ rank still in S. And somehow they almost always seem to end up on the enemy team, if the badges on their Splashtags are anything to go by. This is a problem specific to S rank that I’ve seen a lot of other people talk about too, so I don’t think it’s just me. Whatever the cause for it, there’s some quirk of the ranking system that produces huge brick wall, and having such a massive step up like this I think should be seen as a problem. Although I’m actually somewhat looking forward to my own rank dropping for the new season. Hopefully it’ll mean games that are a bit easier and low pressure for a while as I get back to S. Maybe a good chance to try some new weapons too.

Another issue that I noticed myself, which also seems to be a common thing the community has picked up on, is the map design. While most of them are fine, a lot of the brand new or heavily redesigned stages from older games have some problems. They tend to have really poor flanking options. They’re often quite narrow, and don’t have good alternative routes to get in to the middle of the stages. This leads to a lot of matches feeling very one-sided, as one team can easily lock out the opponent and snowball their momentum. Being on the losing side, it feels like there’s just nothing you can do when the very few options of approach are all covered. Alternatively it can lead to matches that are a stalemate where no one can make any push happen at all. This is actually something Nintendo seems to have picked up on though, and they announced a lot of stages are getting changed for the new season. Changes have been made to stages before, but I don’t think there’s ever been anywhere near this many all at once. It still remains to be seen exactly how well those changes with improve things, but it does bring some hope.

There’s also the matter the catalogue/battle pass type stuff. I was pretty hesitant about this stuff at first, and it definitely has some questionable aspects now that I’ve had time with it, but nothing about it is particularly bad. It turns out that you actually can’t order gear from previous season’s catalogues from other players. It’s disappointing, but it’s not like there’s a huge amount of clothes exclusive to that, and I suspect they might add a way to get that stuff later on anyway. Other things from the catalogue can also now be randomly won out of the gacha machine in the lobby now too, so there’s at least a way to get that stuff. I’m not sure what to think about how long it takes to complete a catalogue though. While you don’t need to spend any money or do anything specific, it ended up taking me around 100 hours to get through it. That sounds like a lot, but spread that over the span of three whole months, that looks a lot more reasonable. It took me about half that time, but I probably play a lot more than the average person would, so I’m not sure how it actually shakes out for most people.

[ColinAlonso]

Good write up Scrustle. I don't play Splatoon as much as you it seems. I agree with you on pretty much everything there. Mahi-Mahi must be my least favourite map, everything is so tight there.

(As you'd know but for people who don't play) On the catalogue, there is a bonus amount of points for your first win of the day of 7,500 points. Each catalogue level is 9,500 points. Since that is the quickest way to get points, it does create a bit of that 'I have to do my daily login' vibe of mobile games. The upshot is that getting most of those plus extra points from a few longer play sessions and having a good go during Splatfests* and Big Runs during a season should clear a catalogue. I didn't quite put that much effort into it as it's still quite a bit of play, but played enough to reach level 83.

*Bring back Shifty Stations!!!!

[Alex79]

Started Pentiment last night, and I'm really enjoying it. Don't have much more to say, but I'm a couple of hours in - the murder you have to solve has taken place - and I'm in the immediate aftermath of that. It's just a really good game. The writing is good, and you get a real sense of each characters personality. Just great stuff so far!

[DeadpoolNegative]

Started Pentiment last night, and I'm really enjoying it. Don't have much more to say, but I'm a couple of hours in - the murder you have to solve has taken place - and I'm in the immediate aftermath of that. It's just a really good game. The writing is good, and you get a real sense of each characters personality. Just great stuff so far!

Pentiment was one of the best games I played last year. It has its flaws but the story has jaw dropping moments and there was a real emotional catharsis at the end.

--Dan

[Alex79]

Started Pentiment last night, and I'm really enjoying it. Don't have much more to say, but I'm a couple of hours in - the murder you have to solve has taken place - and I'm in the immediate aftermath of that. It's just a really good game. The writing is good, and you get a real sense of each characters personality. Just great stuff so far!

Pentiment was one of the best games I played last year. It has its flaws but the story has jaw dropping moments and there was a real emotional catharsis at the end.

--Dan

Finished act one and about half an hour of act two last night. I felt awful when...

Spoiler: show

I got Lucky, the stonemason, executed! I had no real evidence, just told the archdeacon what I'd seen about him being shifty and they lopped off his head! I don't think I got that right! I really don't know who did the murder, but I don't think it was him! Should have got the old widow lady killed, she didn't even care!

[Magical_Isopod]

I've been playing Scars Above, which just released on Feb 28. I was kind of expecting to be disappointed, given the middling reviews... But guys, barring a failure to stick the landing, this is a strong contender for my GOTY.

Like my previous GOTY, The Chant, this game is just... A game. No DLC, no battle passes, didn't even need a day one patch on PS5. It's a no-bullshit single player game for a budget price, and it's incredibly refreshing. The game runs amazing, and while the animation can be a bit stiff on the human models at times, it looks and feels like a AAA game.

The gameplay is amazing. It's ostensibly a Soulsbourne, but thanks to very accessible difficulty options, I am finding the easy mode to be a robust challenge with occasional deaths as I learn the mechanics of each encounter. You eventually have four elemental weapons to work with, each with various secondary and environmental effects that lend a bit of a Metroidvania bent (although the game is quite linear - to its benefit, I would say).

The story is pretty basic, but the themes here remind me A LOT of what Mass Effect Andromeda was going for in the first half (before it abandoned its own plot). It's some compelling and appropriately terrifying stuff.

Anyway, I'll do a more comprehensive review later, but this game is a TON of fun, with some really great boss encounters and amazing art direction. Ignore the middling reviews, they are completely wrong.

[Truk_Kurt]

Has anyone here bought a PSVR 2. I haven't but must admit that watching some video reviews of Gran Turismo 7 VR got me very tempted. It sounds so good! As much as I would love to play it though I cant justify that money for one game.

[Jon Cheetham]

So I beat Resident Evil Revelations 2 in about ten hours… and so far spent another 15+ hours on Raid Mode.

Capcom hid one of the best Resi games they’ve done as an unlockable arcade mode in a spin-off title. This is an entire game to itself, with 24 stages mostly unique or taken from previous titles like Resi 6 and the first Revelations. There’s a ton of characters including Leon, Jill, Chris and Wesker.

Stages are about 5 minutes long, unlike Mercenaries there’s no time limit and you’re not doing a time attack. You just need to get to the end of the level and are awarded for certain conditions ie defeating all enemies, no herb, playing it at or below the suggested level etc. You don’t have to do every stage in a row, it saves after every one. It respects your time.

It’s this bite size blast of Resi action, in my case on handheld which is even better. Many of the stages are like mini setpieces from the main games as well, so some might be about sniping enemies before they reach you, another has low visibility and zombies are lurching out of the foliage at you.

It progresses like an rpg, so you’re levelling up to improve your damage and defence, collecting and upgrading weapons all the time etc. You can also do it all in coop although I haven’t mucked about with that yet.

This is so underrated. If you like these games, especially 4 and the remakes, this is well worth a punt.

[Tleprie]

I picked up Citizen Sleeper last year when it launched, and played for about an hour then. I could tell I was gonna love it, but was too occupied with other life and work stuff to fully enjoy it. Just started it up again tonight and am loving it. The art and sound art top notch, and there is just the right amount of gameplay and interactivity to keep me engaged without anything feeling superfluous.

I also reinstalled Disco Elysium, as I felt I was in a similar boat with that when I bought it last year. The first couple hours were very engaging at the time, the writing seems superb, but I'm worried about all the walking about getting tedious, especially compared to Citizen Sleeper that represents movement with just icons on a map to travel to. With how highly regarded it is, I'm sure I'll enjoy it when I do get around to it, just might take me a bit to be in the right mindset for that type of game.

[MattL]

In the last two weeks, I've started two games:

First, Returnal on PS5. This game is something else. I chose not to buy the game at it's release because I can normally only handle so many Rogue-likes at a time and at the time of Returnal's release, I was trying to complete Dead Cells and had recently started Hades. So fast forward to about three weeks ago and I was pretty much caught up on all my new games and was just replaying some old stuff (Sekiro and Dark Souls 3) and then I saw some pretty deep discounts and clearances for Returnal, leading me to believe that physical copies were soon to be hard to find, so I decided to dive in. I'm only about 8 hours in, but this may turn into my favorite Rogue-like of all time. The art direction and story just evokes so many of my favorite cliches/tropes from sci-fi, psychological, and Lovecraftian horror. The game chills me just walking through it. Every cycle I notice some new detail in the environment that just adds to the oppressive, lonely, alien atmosphere. And there have been a lot of cycles so far because this game does not mess around when it comes to challenge. But I rank it up there with Fromsoft-style challenge, where almost every death felt fair; I died because I made a mistake and now I can learn from it. I just feel like this game was made for me and I can't wait to explore more.

Second, The Last of Us Part 2 on PS5. Not sure what the spoiler policy here is on a game that's almost three years old now, so I'll have to spoiler mark most of my thoughts, because, frankly, I don't know how I can talk about my feelings thus far without getting into entire game spoilers. So I'm about 4 hours in and

Spoiler: show

after Joel's torture and murder, all I want is to kill Abby and the WLF. I don't want to play as Abby. I don't want to hear her side of the story. I don't care Abby's dad was going to create a cure. I don't even want to waste time talking to Dina, or Maria, or Jesse, or Tommy, or any other characters. I just want Abby dead, more than any other character in fiction, games or otherwise. I knew what was coming from having read spoilers, but I never expected to be as furious as I was while watching it all play out and the sad part is I know the ending results in Ellie just letting Abby go. So the point of the game is the cycle of revenge has to stop. I get that, but it took Ellie killing how many people to figure that out? By the end, I'm sure I'm going to have killed dozens of WLF, most of whom I'm sure will have had nothing to do with Joel's death. Why would Ellie stop with the one person who is actually directly responsible? At that point, in for a penny, in for a pound, I say. Kill Abby, because you've already killed all her comrades. There's no reason to leave her alive.

Neil Druckman wanted to make a game teaching us the oh, so important and oft-forgotten lesson that "revenge is bad, m'kay" and how Joel's decision at the end of TLOU Part 1 was wrong? Well, good for him, I guess. He made me want revenge, but he's never going to convince me Joel was wrong, because everything in TLOU Part 1 implied the Fireflies were absolutely incompetent and were just grasping at straws and anything saying otherwise in this game is completely fabricated retroactive continuity.

Anyways, whatever. I'll finish the game because I enjoy the moment to moment gameplay, but I consider this story Neil Druckman's personal fan fiction and I'm very worried at the amount of power he has over Naughty Dog.

[GKBracken]

Not to sidestep the narrative issues around TLOU2 but I daresay they would be a lot more palatable if they weren't bolted onto a game that's, at least, 10ish hours too long. The final product really could've done with an editor that had at least heard the expression "kill your darlings."

[Truk_Kurt]

Got back into God of War Ragnorak after a small hiatus. The last thing I did was

Spoiler: show

the section where you are collecting fruit on the back of a Mammoth which I thought was the worst part of both this game and the last game, it was so dull and was basically just a chance for the characters to deliver plot to you, but then last night came the highlight of the game so far and up there with the best moments between both games and that was the fight with Nidhogg. What an incredible boss fight. Mechanically it felt varied and most importantly fun, and the spectacle of it was fantastic to behold. My favourite boss fight alongside the dragon boss fight in the first game.

God of War really knows how to deliver on boss fights.

[Alex79]

Second, The Last of Us Part 2 on PS5. Not sure what the spoiler policy here is on a game that's almost three years old now, so I'll have to spoiler mark most of my thoughts, because, frankly, I don't know how I can talk about my feelings thus far without getting into entire game spoilers. So I'm about 4 hours in and

Spoiler: show

after Joel's torture and murder, all I want is to kill Abby and the WLF. I don't want to play as Abby. I don't want to hear her side of the story. I don't care Abby's dad was going to create a cure. I don't even want to waste time talking to Dina, or Maria, or Jesse, or Tommy, or any other characters. I just want Abby dead, more than any other character in fiction, games or otherwise. I knew what was coming from having read spoilers, but I never expected to be as furious as I was while watching it all play out and the sad part is I know the ending results in Ellie just letting Abby go. So the point of the game is the cycle of revenge has to stop. I get that, but it took Ellie killing how many people to figure that out? By the end, I'm sure I'm going to have killed dozens of WLF, most of whom I'm sure will have had nothing to do with Joel's death. Why would Ellie stop with the one person who is actually directly responsible? At that point, in for a penny, in for a pound, I say. Kill Abby, because you've already killed all her comrades. There's no reason to leave her alive.

Neil Druckman wanted to make a game teaching us the oh, so important and oft-forgotten lesson that "revenge is bad, m'kay" and how Joel's decision at the end of TLOU Part 1 was wrong? Well, good for him, I guess. He made me want revenge, but he's never going to convince me Joel was wrong, because everything in TLOU Part 1 implied the Fireflies were absolutely incompetent and were just grasping at straws and anything saying otherwise in this game is completely fabricated retroactive continuity.

Anyways, whatever. I'll finish the game because I enjoy the moment to moment gameplay, but I consider this story Neil Druckman's personal fan fiction and I'm very worried at the amount of power he has over Naughty Dog.

Honestly, I felt the same at first.

Spoiler: show

But the more I played, the more I did not, and the more I sympathised with her cause. She's still the villain, I think, but I could understand why she did it, and I enjoyed her story arc.

[DeadpoolNegative]

Having played through Uncharted 4 last week, I too have questions about Neil Druckmann's writing ability.

--Dan

[Alex79]

Having played through Uncharted 4 last week, I too have questions about Neil Druckmann's writing ability.

--Dan

Ah man, I really loved that story too Everything about it! Getting pulled back in to the business, family stuff, the ending. I just really like those characters.

[Tleprie]

Second, The Last of Us Part 2 on PS5. Not sure what the spoiler policy here is on a game that's almost three years old now, so I'll have to spoiler mark most of my thoughts, because, frankly, I don't know how I can talk about my feelings thus far without getting into entire game spoilers. So I'm about 4 hours in and

Spoiler: show

after Joel's torture and murder, all I want is to kill Abby and the WLF. I don't want to play as Abby. I don't want to hear her side of the story. I don't care Abby's dad was going to create a cure. I don't even want to waste time talking to Dina, or Maria, or Jesse, or Tommy, or any other characters. I just want Abby dead, more than any other character in fiction, games or otherwise. I knew what was coming from having read spoilers, but I never expected to be as furious as I was while watching it all play out and the sad part is I know the ending results in Ellie just letting Abby go. So the point of the game is the cycle of revenge has to stop. I get that, but it took Ellie killing how many people to figure that out? By the end, I'm sure I'm going to have killed dozens of WLF, most of whom I'm sure will have had nothing to do with Joel's death. Why would Ellie stop with the one person who is actually directly responsible? At that point, in for a penny, in for a pound, I say. Kill Abby, because you've already killed all her comrades. There's no reason to leave her alive.

Neil Druckman wanted to make a game teaching us the oh, so important and oft-forgotten lesson that "revenge is bad, m'kay" and how Joel's decision at the end of TLOU Part 1 was wrong? Well, good for him, I guess. He made me want revenge, but he's never going to convince me Joel was wrong, because everything in TLOU Part 1 implied the Fireflies were absolutely incompetent and were just grasping at straws and anything saying otherwise in this game is completely fabricated retroactive continuity.

Anyways, whatever. I'll finish the game because I enjoy the moment to moment gameplay, but I consider this story Neil Druckman's personal fan fiction and I'm very worried at the amount of power he has over Naughty Dog.

Honestly, I felt the same at first.

Spoiler: show

But the more I played, the more I did not, and the more I sympathised with her cause. She's still the villain, I think, but I could understand why she did it, and I enjoyed her story arc.

Spoiler: show

By the end of the game I was much more on Abby's side. The game was very effective for me at changing her from a villain to a sympathetic character. While I think Ellie is justified in her revenge quest, so was Abby in hers, we just had a whole game getting to know Ellie and Joel to feel much more connected to them at the start of the second game. I don't remember details about the Fireflies being incompetent, maybe desperate, though it has been a long while since I've played the first game.

I think Ellie is well past broken by the end of 2, and I could have just as easily seen her kill Abby, much like Abby could have killed Ellie in the theatre, Abby just had her "revenge isn't helping anything" moment at that point and it took Ellie til the end of the game for hers.

Not to sidestep the narrative issues around TLOU2 but I daresay they would be a lot more palatable if they weren't bolted onto a game that's, at least, 10ish hours too long. The final product really could've done with an editor that had at least heard the expression "kill your darlings."

I'm of the opinion that almost all pieces of art/entertainment could do with being cut down by 20-40%, but oddly enough I found TLOU2's length beneficial to the overall feel of the game. There were definitely parts that dragged and especially the final chapters at first felt unnecessary, but then when credits rolled I felt that having to slog through the game helped me feel a bit of the desperation and weariness the characters would have been feeling by the end.

It certainly helps that the gameplay itself is engaging all the way through. I doubt I'd feel the same about a less smooth playing game of equal length.

[Alex79]

Just reached Act 3 of Pentiment and...

WARNING: ACTUAL HUGE STORY SPOILER. DON'T READ UNLESS YOU'VE ALREADY GOT TO ACT 3!!

Spoiler: show

I'm kinda bummed that Maler is dead! I really liked his character! I accused Brother Guy of doing the second murder. None of them had a clear cut reason, but he was a dick for the whole game, so I picked him anyway.

I thought it was a really neat twist that Martin is an imposter, though. But didn't feel like that was ground enough for murder, and the Inn lady seemed even less likely, so of the three, Guy was most logical for me.

[DeadpoolNegative]

Re: that Petiment spoiler, I actually dropped my controller and was speechless. I couldn't believe what was actually happening.

--Dan