Whatcha Been Playing?

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MattL
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by MattL »

Elden Ring, PS5 - I'm still plugging away at it since getting the game on launch day. Such a long game. I've had to take extended breaks, so as to not burn myself out on it. I just finished Farum Azula and I'm going to do the Haligtree before continuing on to the ashen Leyndell. This might be the first Fromsoft game that I don't immediately replay due to the excessive length.

Nioh 2, PS5 - Now that I have a PS5 and an LG C1 (thank you Prime Day), I wanted to try some 120fps gaming and utilize some of my free PS5 upgrades, but I'm still struggling with this game after putting it down last year. I was relatively decent at Nioh 1, but I'm hitting brick walls in every single stage and I'm having to brute force my way through the game by summoning. All. The. Time. My issues are as follows: (1) Enemies do way too much damage for how early I am in the game. It feels like I'm playing Nioh 1's third DLC on NG+ while only in the second zone of Nioh 2. (2) I cannot read the enemy movements. Sometimes it's their speed, which was a bit of an issue in Nioh 1. Other times it's the awful Yokai corruption that turns the screen grey scale and covers it in particle effects and I suppose my almost 40 year old eyes can't parse through all that visual noise. I hate the Yokai zone. (3) I haven't found a weapon set that I like. My old reliables of sword, odachi, and spear just aren't cutting it, but I'm not liking any other weapons yet. Any advice would be appreciated. That being said, I know how to use ki flux and ki pulse.

Doom Eternal, PS5 - Much like Nioh 2 above, I put this game down shortly after purchasing it and I'm trying to pick it back up now for the PS5 upgrade and the 120fps gaming. And much like Nioh 2 above, I'm still having the same issues now, as compared to when I gave up on it. I do not like how they took a pure FPS and mixed it with a character action game. I just don't. There's too many enemies in every encounter, too many weapons to ammo manage, too many alternate firing modes to remember, too many specific weakpoints to remember, and too many abilities on too many cooldowns. It's mind-boggling. It's not what I wanted from a Doom game.
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Kez86
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Picked up Resident Evil 4 on Switch for this weekends gaming time. Can't wait to continue my Resident Evil journey. Only 17 years late to the party.
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Truk_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Alex79 wrote: August 2nd, 2022, 9:20 am
Truk_Kurt wrote: August 2nd, 2022, 9:06 am
Alex79 wrote: August 1st, 2022, 2:52 pm I started X-Com 2 on my Switch last night. Whilst I really enjoy the battlefield elements to the game, I've found myself immediately hitting the same issue I had with the first game. The command centre stuff is just really confusing and barely explained. I am utterly clueless as to what I should be researching, building, and where I need my ship to be flying and what it should be doing when it gets there. And this seems even more complicated than the first game. There is just so much stuff to research and micromanage. Turn based strategy games are totally outside my normal comfort zone, but I enjoy X-Com, it's just this side of the game always leaves me scratching my head over what I ought to be doing.
You have a Series S right and Game Pass? If so, I would highly recommend giving Gears Tactics a go as it offers a more simplified version of XCOM in that it gets rid of the command centre style stuff altogether, you just focus on the battlefield gameplay and it excels in that area. Because of this I prefer it to XCOM, also because it's easier than the quite unforgiving XCOM 2. Gears Tactics is more akin to Mario & Rabbids I would say in it's more simplified approach. I don't think you have to be into Gears to enjoy it either, that's just a bonus if you do.
Hmm I may give it a try as I know you speak very highly of it, although the main reason I've been able to get in to X-Com and it's sequel as I've been able to play them on a handheld. As for X-Com 2, the missions seem so much bigger in scope than the first game. Did an incredible one last night set over multiple levels of a factory building with a giant mech fight at the end! It was so impressive.
I don't know what it is about XCOM 2 but I find it just so damn hard! The furthest I have ever got is 3 missions in and that's on the easiest difficulty but I'm playing it just as I would an other XCOM style game.

If you have had any success streaming via xcloud or via your xbox to your phone, apparently Gears Tactics works really well on the phone.
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MattL
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Kez86 wrote: August 3rd, 2022, 8:11 pm Picked up Resident Evil 4 on Switch for this weekends gaming time. Can't wait to continue my Resident Evil journey. Only 17 years late to the party.
Enjoy it! I swear I've played that game close to 10 times between the Gamecube and Wii versions. It was fantastic and one of my favorite gaming experiences ever.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Truk_Kurt wrote: August 4th, 2022, 9:53 amI don't know what it is about XCOM 2 but I find it just so damn hard! The furthest I have ever got is 3 missions in and that's on the easiest difficulty but I'm playing it just as I would an other XCOM style game.

If you have had any success streaming via xcloud or via your xbox to your phone, apparently Gears Tactics works really well on the phone.
I've stuck it on Rookie (easy) and am having a lot of fun with it now, I've played over 15 hours in the last four days or so! I'm a good few missions in now and have a lot of upgraded soldiers. I've customised them all, given them names and tailored their look, I've even filled out their biography section in the menu :lol:

I looked at tons of beginners guides and top 10 tips etc which helped. Seem to be muddling through the off battlefield stuff too now, although there has been a couple of real difficulty spikes. The Viper King was one, totally decimated my team a few times before I managed to get past him.

I will check out Gears Tactics though, I do like the main series (well, 1 and 2 which are the only ones I've played before) and actually just downloaded GoW 2 last night as I planned a playthrough of the series after playing the first one last year but held off because there were rumours about a Master Chief Collection style package of the series similar to the remake of the first game they did a while back, but that doesn't seem to be happening any time soon, if at all.
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Scrustle
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Been playing some Midnight Club: Los Angeles the past few days. I was mulling over the idea ever since finishing MC3 a little while back. I have played this before many years back but didn't get far. I wasn't that interested in it when it first launched, but later on it came around to Games with Gold and played it then. But that was still nine years ago according to my achievements. I was kind of nonplussed by it then. This time around I think I'm enjoying it more, but I'm still not sure how long I'll stick with it.

Compared to MC3, it does feel like a significantly slower experience. Both in terms of how fast cars go, but also the pacing of the game overall. Jumping from event to event takes longer, it has much more cutscenes and dialogue, and cars don't have that twitchy eagerness to them either. The handling isn't bad by any means though. The way cars feel to drift is quite satisfying actually. Once a car breaks out in to a slide it's very controllable and swinging a car through a corner gracefully is easy enough to pull off without too much effort, but just difficult enough that guiding it properly is something you actually want to do. But before you do break in to a slide, the steering has a really spongy feel to it. Like it's resisting your attempts to turn at first, before letting go in a much sharper angle. It might just be because I'm still in the relatively low level cars, but it's kind of weird. I'd say the driving model overall is less fun than MC3, but at the same time the stuff that made that system good was also what made it bad. It was a double-edged sword, and this game reins that in, for better or worse.

The game also has this weird issue that it feels like it's running terribly, but it turns out it's just the camera shake. By default, it feels really stuttery and unstable. Like it has terrible frame pacing. But I noticed there's an option to turn off the camera shake, and it improves the experience massively. It feels way smoother, and the game hasn't missed a beat so far. Such a weird addition to the game. I mean, I see why camera shake makes sense in a racing game, and I've played others where it didn't cause a problem. But here it was just an awful constant vibration. Giving you the ability to turn it off feels like an admittance that the devs knew it was bad as well.
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ColinAlonso
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Truk_Kurt wrote: August 4th, 2022, 9:53 am I don't know what it is about XCOM 2 but I find it just so damn hard! The furthest I have ever got is 3 missions in and that's on the easiest difficulty but I'm playing it just as I would an other XCOM style game.

If you have had any success streaming via xcloud or via your xbox to your phone, apparently Gears Tactics works really well on the phone.
It's been a long time now, but I quit XCOM 2 very quickly. If I remember correctly there were quite a few missions with turn limits, which was quite the slap in the face to how carefully I played XCOM.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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ColinAlonso wrote: August 4th, 2022, 8:39 pm
Truk_Kurt wrote: August 4th, 2022, 9:53 am I don't know what it is about XCOM 2 but I find it just so damn hard! The furthest I have ever got is 3 missions in and that's on the easiest difficulty but I'm playing it just as I would an other XCOM style game.

If you have had any success streaming via xcloud or via your xbox to your phone, apparently Gears Tactics works really well on the phone.
It's been a long time now, but I quit XCOM 2 very quickly. If I remember correctly there were quite a few missions with turn limits, which was quite the slap in the face to how carefully I played XCOM.
Yeah there are a couple but the limits are fairly generous (on Rookie, not sure if they get tighter on higher difficulties). I'm stuck at the moment on a mission where I have to defend our ship because it got tracked by a UFO and the enemies are just spawning endlessly. Keep restarting, but I equipped one of my guys with an unsuitable gun, but can't reload a save before the mission starts or I'll lose about three missions worth of progess :(
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Kez86
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Started Resi 4 today. Loving it so far. Found the controls and camera a real throw back that took a long time to adjust to. Also the aiming! I think I spent at least a good half hour trying to work out how to survive the first village square sequence. I Caned and Rinsed through my ammo and relied on the knife. Is this just a timed sequence or do you actually need to kill people?

Also one of the first cabins you come across there's a female impaled to the wall by a pitchfork. The caption reads “Guess there’s no sex discrimination here.”... what?! I'm sorry, but what?

Also the "Where's everyone off to? Bingo?" Line is perfection.
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Kez86
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Also, got back onto the MK8 tracks this weekend.

After having achieved the gold trophies and 3 star rankings for all cups so far (includes all cc's and mirror mode) Nintendo release wave 2 of DLC tracks and once again I am pulled out of retirement to hunt them down and secure them for my trophy cabinet. Brilliant!

Additional. For anyone wanting some MK8 online or other game online add me on Switch!

Name: Kes
Friend code: SW-0522-7823-3517
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Kez86 wrote: August 6th, 2022, 11:30 pm Started Resi 4 today. Loving it so far. Found the controls and camera a real throw back that took a long time to adjust to. Also the aiming! I think I spent at least a good half hour trying to work out how to survive the first village square sequence. I Caned and Rinsed through my ammo and relied on the knife. Is this just a timed sequence or do you actually need to kill people?

Also one of the first cabins you come across there's a female impaled to the wall by a pitchfork. The caption reads “Guess there’s no sex discrimination here.”... what?! I'm sorry, but what?

Also the "Where's everyone off to? Bingo?" Line is perfection.
I know it goes against all modern convention, but I switched aiming to the left stick, which is how the game originally controlled, and found it a lot easier.
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Jon Cheetham
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

Post by Jon Cheetham »

Have now played through the new map for Hitman III three times. Ambrose Island it’s called, set in the Andaman Ocean. It’s a lot like a Hitman 2 map, really sprawling with lots of sub zones to discover and cause trouble in. Love it for that reason and really good to finally have another one of these levels to pour runs into. I wish they’d bring one of these out every few months for the rest of time tbh
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dezm0nd
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I am on a massive Turn Based Strategy kick at the moment. It really suits my lifestyle of it being slower paced and easy to pick up and put down as and when I need to.

I have had troubles with Mutant: Year Zero, X-Com 2, Gears Tactics and Into the Breach but once I realised I should turn the difficulty down if i'm struggling I would enjoy the games more. Funny isn't it how my "gamer" label insists I should play it on medium but if i'm struggling, then why abandon ship when there's a life boat near by.
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Truk_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I find it odd how turn based tactics games seem to have a higher threshold when it comes to difficulty. I think there is only Mario and Rabbids which I didn't change the difficulty on from normal and I think that might be because there weren't any difficulty options, but I might be wrong on that.
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MattL
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Kez86 wrote: August 6th, 2022, 11:30 pm Started Resi 4 today. Loving it so far. Found the controls and camera a real throw back that took a long time to adjust to. Also the aiming! I think I spent at least a good half hour trying to work out how to survive the first village square sequence. I Caned and Rinsed through my ammo and relied on the knife. Is this just a timed sequence or do you actually need to kill people?

Also one of the first cabins you come across there's a female impaled to the wall by a pitchfork. The caption reads “Guess there’s no sex discrimination here.”... what?! I'm sorry, but what?

Also the "Where's everyone off to? Bingo?" Line is perfection.
I found the initial village sequence to be among the hardest in the game. Once you've learned the game mechanics well enough to survive it, you should be mostly able to handle the rest of the game. And if I remember from data miners back in the day, the village bell will ring after killing a certain number of villages or you can just hold out until it rings on it's own on a timer.

If you liked the Bingo line, you'll enjoy this game. There's quite a few notable quotables.
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Truk_Kurt
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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I finally got a PS5 and set it up Sunday night and got around to playing it last night. First game up was Ghosts of Tshuima after I borrowed it from a friend, so prioritised it so I can return it as soon as I can. The first couple of hours have really impressed me, the combat feels very satisfying to me. Watching videos of it before, I thought it looked kind of similar to the Arkham games, whilst it isn't quite, I do think there are some similarities to it. Either way, it is very satisfying to perform parries perfectly followed by a counter attack and I can see me enjoying it more as I unlock more moves and stances. The stealth also reminded me of the Arkham games which is no bad thing at all. I also am intrigued by Jins moral quandary of being a Samurai but being forced to perform inhonorable attacks like stealth killing enemies and how that will play into the story. So overall, very good first impressions and excited to play more.
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Jon Cheetham
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Streets of Rage 4 - HUGE fun! Got it on sale on Switch. The music is amazing and the stages are so fun to pummel through.
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Tolkientaters
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Picked up Cult of the Lamb and I'm loving it. I've never really gone in on farming Sims, but this game is just hard to put down. It's well paced where you're always want to unlock that next thing which manages to feel just different enough to keep you hooked. The combat is solid, but the pop up storybook presentation is just incredible, every choice with the presentation from the "dialog", to the music, and the animation just keeps you engaged.
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Alex79
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Anyone tried Turbo Golf Racing yet? Downloading it to Xbox now. I'm sure this phrase has been overused in any reviews, which I've not read yet, but it really does look like Rocket League golf.
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Kez86
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Re: Whatcha Been Playing?

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Tolkientaters wrote: August 13th, 2022, 3:21 pm Picked up Cult of the Lamb and I'm loving it. I've never really gone in on farming Sims, but this game is just hard to put down. It's well paced where you're always want to unlock that next thing which manages to feel just different enough to keep you hooked. The combat is solid, but the pop up storybook presentation is just incredible, every choice with the presentation from the "dialog", to the music, and the animation just keeps you engaged.
Yeah this is on my list. Looks so good!
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