>>14036
It certainly did get the feel right and the music did have a charming fit to it. I was pretty impressed with the intro segment of the game. It felt like something Tarantino would have gone for. I never really touch on multiplayer stuff but I can see the appeal of being able to unlock every story character in the game.
I'm no stranger to short games, and I know a lot of older ones can easily be knocked out in a few hours. Maybe I missed some stuff in the game but something about RDR just gave off that vibe like they meant to have more. Aside from what I mentioned before, another example is the horse ridding which is only used for the train attack level. You'd think if they went through the trouble of making a ridable horse in the game that they would have used it more than once. The trailer you linked certainly made it look like they originally had more use for it. It's also very curious to see they wanted to have a flying character considering how small the maps are.

Horizon zero dawn somehow managed to recently get a PC port in spite of previously being a big budget PlayStation exclusive, seemed like that'd be the version to play but when I heard they screwed up the port two ways from sunday I decided to dust off the copy I had for ps4 and just play that instead. I guess they wanted to take a dip into the pc market to promote the upcoming sequel and ps5. It was a game included with half a dozen others I got in a cheap batch but never got around to playing till now.

In the game you play as a orphan outcast who's been shunned by her tribe to be raised by a guy who's also been an outcast. If nothing else this frame work helps to justify why the protagonist is such a loner who often talks to themselves throughout the game. This takes place in a post apocalyptic world full of barbaric tribes and wild machine animals roaming the land. This of course raises a lot of questions, and the game is actually pretty good at explaining 'most' of it all in a fairly satisfying way. Although more than a few holes do start to pop up in the plot by the end. It's nice though how the game starts by just focusing on the main character trying to accepted by the tribe who shunned her, learn about her parents ect, then the story very naturally expands as the game world does too.

It's always funny seeing scifi media where in people treat technology like magic, and this is no exception. Not just in universe where they think machines were sent by the devil, but also from the creators who somehow don't seem to understand how electronics work. Your character learns a fair bit as they progress so it's understandable by the end that she would be better able to work with the things around her, but even so from the start you hack complex electronics and bend them to you will by jamming a mcguffin up it's ass that you tied to a stick. There's a point where normal people can see data streams with their naked eye. In general people do a lot of complex things that should be pretty hard for people who don't even use electricity (as anything other than ammo type). But to be fair, our main character essentially grew up with a smart phone to spend her life tinkering with and figure out, and the only other character who really has a true grasp on technology has a pretty decent in universe explanation for why.

There's no doubt it's a nice looking game. Apparently the pc port needs a hypothetical super computer to run it properly due to bad codding. With the attention to detail given to the landscapes I can certainly believe it. It takes place in what's left of utah so most of the map is natural landscapes with just a few ruins of old cities scattered around. Unironically the city ruins look like garbage. Those areas look like they're from a last gen game at best. There's not really much of anything to explore in them anyway, and if anything they can be a bit annoying to traverse.
Speaking of traversing the map, it has this climbing system that reminds me a lot of Uncharted or Asscreed, but done far far worse. You're only able to climb things that are yellow or have hard to notice bird poop on them. Far too often I'd be jumping up and down tryng to get on top of something, only to latter realize if there isn't a yellow/poop path lied out for you, they didn't mean for you to go there and as such there's nothing to see there anyway. The character would also glue herself to these yellow/poop objects like glue and not let go sometimes. I found myself smashing all the buttons on my pad at times just trying to get her to let go.

Unlike the nice looking landscapes however, the character models have this sort of uncanny valley thing going on. During the Mass Effect style conversation segments, characters act like robots wearing human skin. This isn't helped by how oddly perfect some of them look. By perfect I mean with flawless skin that looks almost like rubber. I swear I couldn't help but laugh at some of the characters, they're supposed to be savage tribal men who grew up hunting in the wilds, but they look like Ken dolls in bad cosplay. On top of that a number of characters are very flamboyant. I don't think they're meant to be gay but they sure act like it. The conversation segments seem to have an oddly limited range of animations, some of which are used very inappropriately for what characters are saying or doing. There's one point for example when you approach a character sitting next to some water. She gets up and you both take your talking stances across from each other. You talk to her a bit, As the character continues to talk to you and looks you right in the eyes: "oh, is that my sister in the water?" "oh wait no, I'm just looking at my own reflection. God I miss her..."
I thought stuff like this might have been because I was playing an unpatched version of the game. I tried downloading a 1gb update but all that seemed to do was preinstall a paywalled dlc expansion.

All in all I thought the combat was well executed. I liked the fact that the leveling system in the game was only there to unlock new abilities and didn't effect your personal much. Even buying better weapons didn't seem to change how much damage you'd do. You could raise it with weapon mods but even then it mostly comes down to the type of ammo you use and skill/know how. It all made you feel OP without really being OP. Even late game enemies from the start could fug your shat up if you're an idiot. If anything I think being able to carry less ammo and heal items early on is probably the main contributor to what made things easier as it went on. By the end you're a walking armory and ammo factory. That said the ultimate big baddy enemies called "Death Bringers" were a tad underwhelming. They're very slow and most of their weapons can be knocked off fairly easily. The "thunder jaws" which are pretty much mechanical dinosaurs, were a lot more challenging. If you knock their weapons off they'll just run over and stomp on you.


The plot really bugged me by the end because it left a lot of things unresolved and sort of just 'ended', felt a bit like sequel bait. For anyone who's curious about the story A corporation in the future decided for some genius reason that they should make and sell fully automated war machines that could consume local mater (inorganic and organic) to fuel themselves and replicate more of themselves, and of course they were built with no backdoors or fail safes I guess. so of course they go Skynet on all life and turn the earth into a barren inhospitable wasteland crawling with killer robot spider tanks.

So how are there plants, animals, human tribes, and machine animals running around? and who's the MC's parents? That's where things get a bit more interesting.

The militaries of old tried and failed to fight off the machine swarms. They'd replicate faster than humans could kill them. Apparently the governments of the old world seeing the looming threat and knowing full well they couldn't stop it, pressured the head of the corporation responsible for unleashing the hoard to fund a massive project they called "Zero Dawn". Apparently they tried building a ship and sending people into orbit but that didn't pan out and they didn't have time to try again leaving the fate of humanity to rely on Zero Dawn alone. It's a bit weird to explain what zero dawn is exactly, but I guess it's a combination of a complex AI and vault system housing dna and knowledge of all life. At it's core was an ai designed to spend the next hundred years cracking the codes to shut down the machine swarms, while also terraforming the planet to make it hospitable for life again, then using breeding chambers and automated classrooms ect to bring humans back once it's safe. Part of this meant creating machines to roam the land, harvesting materials and fixing the planet. Unfortunately the system screwed up. A subroutine designed to destroy everything and start again became infected with a virus that spread to the other systems and sabotaged the whole operation. On top of this the guy at the head of the corporation decided to say fuck human culture and deleted all the archives containing all human knowledge. To give future generations a clean slate I guess. The core AI in charge of everything tried to solve the virus problem at least, by creating a clone of the head of the program and then nuking itself to take out the problem with it. The MC being that clone, who was created to be able to access any and all systems in Zero Dawn. Also to eliminate that virus ridden subroutine which some humans had dug up, reactivated, and began to worship as the "metal devil", who trying to build an army of salvaged war machines, cult followers, and corrupted machine animals to attack a broadcast tower, to send out a signal to reactivate the swarm and erase life on earth again. So you along with all the people you help out during the course of the game make a stand and fight off the metal devil and his army.

What bothers me about the end is that after defeating the metal devil, the mc just sort of walks away. There was lots of talk about rebooting the AI, fixing it's systems, regaining lost knowledge of humanity past, but at that moment I guess the mc just lost all interest in that. She left her hacking tool behind and decided to go exploring to find her clone mother's final resting place. After the credits we see the Metal Devil leave it's core and fly away, into a device in the hands of a character who helped excavate it in the first place while implying he'd give it a new body in exchange for more info about the old civilizations.
I was hoping to see what would happen to the humans after that, or at least get some clue but I suppose that's for the sequel.


Anyways, I thought it was pretty good, even with a number of issues.

>>14038
I loved it, for a typical AAA it had a lot of good things, great artistic design, competent writing and a really satisfying combat with enough options and different ways to play.
It also had most of your typical generic sandbox shit like boring collectibles, some fetch quests and the annoying timed ones, also a big but too empty map, but overall it was a great experience. I liked doing captures because the game looked georgeous almost all the time. Also I really like games were you can explore ruins and abandoned technology.

>>14040
I couldn't help but do a bunch of screencaps too, but because it was on a ps4 I can't easily share them.
I was disappointed by those collectibles. I had hoped they'd lead to something more interesting, or at the very least unlock you something decent. Once I finished my first set of metal flowers and turned it in I felt like a kid that spent all day and $20 collecting tickets at an arcade just to learn all he could afford was a stick of gum and a rubber band. Needless to say I stopped collecting anything after that. At least the armor you got for collecting all the power cores was pretty neat, even if it didn't allow mods. Wasn't till I got it that I realized this was the first modern game I played in a while that didn't have automatic regenerating HP. It was also funny how her armor reset to the default for some of the cutscenes at the end. It was weirder yet how mohawk bro did a quick-change too for whatever reason back to his original outfit, dunno what was up with that.
Speaking of the metal flowers, I had hopped there would be some, any, explanation for them and the flower patterns around them. Even looking it up online and checking the wiki didn't really seem to explain anything. Almost feels like they were an after thought, there to make the world feel a little less empty. It didn't really feel that empty to me though. Every step of the way there were materials to collect, animals to hunt, and enemies to take on. Not that I wasn't glad to eventually unlock unlimited fast travel and use the hell out of it. Unlike say, Genshin Impact which has a nice looking world, but it felt empty and lifeless with not much to do between objectives.
Another thing in retrospect, it seems a bit silly to even use robots to kill humans. With their technology they could have just had drones do strikes on any and all targets. I mean if you have a roach infestation in your house, you don't send in small robots to kill them all right? If you wanted to eliminate all life on earth, it would make a lot more sense to just gas or radiate the planet. Also, who the hell in their right mind puts the fate of humanity in the hands of someone who makes "bad ass" mobile apps?

Not ripping on the game because I disliked it mind you, I thought it was really good. Just random thoughts.

I played the pikmin games not too long ago. First about two months ago and second a week ago. Took me a good while to track down a copy of the wii version for pikmin 2. I feel like the the wiimote was a good fit for the games and it's weird to picture playing it on the gamecube. Unfortunately it didn't run too well on my laptop, ikmin 2 ran like garbage, I had to keep it on the lowest settings to make it playable, but even then it would turn into a slide show during cinematic. Still, I managed to reach the end on both all the same. The first game seemed appealing back when it came out, but someone I knew insisted I shouldn't play it, warning that it's a game with a constantly ticking clock which you can reach the end of and still fail. I think the only other game I've ever played like that was one called Big Mother Truckers, and that was a pretty horrible game which left me feeling like it was a big waste of time when I got to that non-end. Anywho, Pikmin is a game in which you play as a tiny alien who crash lands on what I think is earth. There you meet little native plant like creatures called pikmin, and by building an army of them you traverse the world looking for the scattered parts of your ship in the first game, and random junk in the second game to take back and sell as treasures on your home planet. I'm not entirely sure if it's earth because while the environment and items you collect resemble things from earth (pikmin 2 had tons of various product placement), almost all the enemies and the pikmin themselves look like nothing found on this planet.
I think the light rts concept is pretty neat. If you know what you're doing there are various points where you can split up your teams and have them carry out different tasks, but that's usually just limited to having pikmin carry things back to base while you continue to explore with your main force. spiting them up to have some take down obstacles wouldn't usually be worth it as it takes forever with a small amount, but can be done fairly quickly when forced on. More so they want you to switch between pikmin types, sending one type to do X, then switching to another type to do Y. The second game seemed to suggest they might want you to micromanage more by giving you two commander type characters you can switch between and control independently, but this was very rarely useful. There was only one boss battle that I encountered in the second game that required using one character to distract the boss then switching to the other to hit it from behind. Most of the time that ability was just a time saver at best as I'd keep one near the base to save me a trip if I need more pikem or some of another type. I think my play style wasn't what was intended because I was overly cautious about loosing pikmin and would often load a save if I lost too many. By the end of each game I had an abundance of pikmin, but I think what they want players to do is to have them die, run away, and learn from your mistake as you farm for more. The problem with that is farming for pikmin can be very time consuming, but you can't really waste time with a ticking clock like in the first game. The second game doesn't really have a time limit for the game itself, but they still have a day and night cycle where in you need to return all active pikmin to the base before dark or they'll die. It's not generally a hard game as long as you keep up a good stock pile of pikmin. Most enimies can be beaten by just spamming pikmin at them with good timing. Your aim when tossing them matters a lot as they can stick to enemy heads, backs, ect. if/when they get thrown off where they land matters too since an enemy can easily eat any that are in front of it, or use some other attack. In general it helps to remember how enemies behave. I heard there's a third game coming out which is pretty neat since I didn't get the impression the first two were all that popular. They're pretty decent games that I think are a bit under rated.

Looks like someone had to learn from CAPCOM that a crap game like MvC:Infinte with a big franchise tie-in is still a crap game.
https://avengers.square-enix-games.com

>>2003
>>13865
How ASSASSIN'S CREED has fallen... from being a hidden blade killer with morals to a Valhalla Viking raiding sim with barely any connections to the previous games.

The fact that you can make it through the game without stealth assassinating someone rubs me the wrong way..

It’s very much a Ubisoft game — good concept, decent to middling execution.

Here's an exercise~ rank all the AC games. All 18 of them.

My fave is the original AC & Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China.
https://youtu.be/hWs6pIOT1o8

A few weeks ago I played Assassins Creed Odyssey, it's nothing like the old Assassins Creed at all, they may as well have just made it a new title. It was a mediocre experience.

The new combat system is like a cheap imitation of a standard action RPG but lacking the refinement they do so coming off as tedious, this becomes far worse as they also have a level system now, fights can take a VERY long time and be VERY tedious, Assassinations are based on level as well so often you can't even do that.

The story is bland, the setting had potential but I really don't like what they have done to the world, AC 1, 2 and the Expansions were set in cities, this meant that you could have a large world and feel like it was actually a real city, Odyssey has a large map but it's the whole of Greece so cities are very small and the world comes off as actually being comically tiny, it's something like 12 or 13 KM from Laconia to Macedonia, it's really hard to be immersed in that. Historically it has issues as well, it feels like it was written by memers that don't actually know Greece beyond those memes, there is a lot of sexual content and you have the option of have s*x with many characters yet s*x out of wedlock was actually highly frowned on in Greece, it was punishable by loss of Citizenship for a woman in Athens and that was Athens. It's highly pro-Spartan, to the point where it portrays Athens as evil and mentions there slavery while giving a VERY brief and VERY sugar-coated mention of the Heliots , it basically says they are treated fine and don't revolt because they feel safe and you actually get a mission from the Spartan king who asks you to stop certain malicious Spartans from a certain Special group from harming them as if they are a minority and that it was not an accepted practice when historically this group in question(I forget the name) Actually routinely did this, it was part of there training to kill and steal from Heliots and morover every year the Spartasn declared symbolic war on the Heliots giving all Spartans the right to kill a Heliot which they would do to kill of any Heliot that was charismatic, good looking or stood out in any other way that might cause them to be a potential rebel or rebel leader, they were treated Horribly in what was a Race based state that people like Hitler glorified yet Ubisoft the people that say 'this game was made by a diverse group from different faiths, ethnicities and gender indemnities' or whatever, glorifies them.

The quests themselves are bland as well it's all, go here kill that gather this, it comes across as a free to play MMO, in fact in many ways it comes across as that, from the levelling system, the combat, the loot, the map, the 'time savers' they offer that you can buy, the weapons you can buy, the types of quest they have, the add-ons, I would not be surprised if the next AC has a Gacha system(or I guess it's Loot box in the west).

It feels nothing Like AC 1 or 2.

>>14077

>(I forget the name)

Crypteia. Though with the years I have read different theories and definitions, from a particularly defined group or "secret police" to just some part of the spartan education program, but it included the killing of helots as some sort of training, and like you said, even a "declaration of war" to them, once a year. By all means it was institutionalized, part of the spartan state. And while there was some reformist spartan kings that could have different ideas about it, I think none of them lived in times of the Peloponnesian war or short after.
I think it was supposed to work as some sort of demographic control and exercise of terror since spartan were few against so many of the subjugated.
I have Odissey and haven't played it, bought it because the setting, but reading your post doesn't give me the slightest motivation to touch it. I find atrocious how they can fake history like that, it's the most lowest form of manipulation and propaganda. And I'm saying it as a pro-spartan myself. I really hate this times we are living in sometimes.
Also it's such a shame we can't have good historical games, it could be a great learning tool, but it seems we are too idiotized for that, we need to project the present to absolutely everything or we don't understand a thing. Only grand strategy games seem to work for me since you can learn lots of geography and focused details from them.

Post edited on 14th Nov 2020, 12:39am

Anyone else playing Sakuna?

>>14082
Tell me about it.

>>14082
No, but i'm looking foward to seeing much more of that character design.

>>14083
It's an action side-scrolling platformer with a relatively detailed rice farming simulation aspect. You play as the titular goddess of harvest/rice and war. It was developed by a doujin circle that had been active in comiket over the years, Edelweiss. Their past titles include Freesia and Astebreed. I find it fun thus far although some people might find the farming aspect a little tedious and repetitive.

>>14077
Sounds pretty shitty. Weird because I heard lots of good things about it elsewhere. It's a shame to hear they butchered the map like that, the attention to detail in the environments was one of the best things about the old asscreed games.

I finished playing No More Heros 2 today. It made me regret selling my wii back in the day before it came out, but after finally getting around to it, it feels disappointingly short. I clocked in at 8 hours when I finished it, and I think I left it running at times too while afk. It certainly has a lot of great moments to it and some neat boss/assassin battles, but the game feels lacking. Ironic as a character at one point comments on how the game is packed full of enough content as it is, after you learn he completed 3 stages for you and rubs it in a bit how you can never play those now. (the game has a bit of 4th wall breaking early on) They start the game off by saying you'll be fighting 50 assassins (bosses and their stages), but one of the first few fights knock the number in half, then again a bit latter on, and many of them don't even have stages. The story is a very paper thin and rushed revenge story with a bit of romance sprinkled in.

It's weird how the game has a number of mechanics that they only seem to use once, like when you have a mecha fight early on, or this really long driving segment where nothing happens as you drive to the boss fight.
There's two playable side characters who almost seem pointless. There's three stages between the two of them, and once done one character who seems really important just disappears from the game for good, the other only shows up again at the end to help on the final battle. Wouldn't have guessed that a magical school swimsuit wearing loli elf in a partial mecha suit would be one of the hardest enemies in the game. Took me a lot more tries than any other, and it doesn't help that it's with one of the playable side characters.

The combat mechanics are nice, but did get a little repetitive at times in combination with some of the stages which felt really long and dragged out. Luckily, there's a power up system you can activate to really kick some ass, and there's also this random chance after every enemy you kill to get an ability that can let you shoot fire balls or turn into a tiger and one hit kill enemies. The side jobs that play like old 8bit games are pretty neat and creative.

Overall I think it was a decent game, it's got a lot of fun things going for it on multiple levels, but it also felt very half baked, almost like the game is an expansion of the first rather than a stand alone. Still, there's nothing wrong with short games that are very direct and to the point while being enjoyable, which I think is what they were sort of going for with this. Not sure if it works too well though. You've got lots of neat moments and set pieces, not much context to back them up. Which is a shame because some of the bosses seem pretty neat and interesting.


Also, I felt this was a really nice touch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ51oME5LZI
The accompanying mini game was also pretty neat too, and it was charming how they used volcaloid for the game bgm. It's no big deal now but when No More Heros came out, being an ironic weeb still hadn't hit the mainstream just yet, so it was kind of fascinating playing a game like this with a moe loving lead character. Whelp, here's looking forward to the third game coming out.

Help. Ikemen is seducing my uncle.

I had a decent amount of fun playing Celeste. When I got to the original version of Celeste accessible in the hotel, I played through it in one go. That way, it foreshadowed getting the double jump upgrade, which was nice. I'm nowhere near close to finishing the game 100%, but I'll return to it someday.

It's been so long since I've felt so sad about completing a game. I do hope there will be a sequel in the future. The game is by no means perfect but it's oddly satisfying.

Recently played the god of war soft reboot, or as some might know it, the "BOY!" game. For those who don't know since I figure people here tend to stick with pc, you play as a character named Kratos who just before being killed in battle makes a deal with ares the god of war to give him a power up in exchange for his soul. Ares then makes Kratos into his whipping boy minion, and sends Kratos on missions to kill so and so, raid villages ect. I guess after doing it so many times Kratos didn't notice when he got sent to attack his home village and killed his own wife and kid in the process. To add insult to injury, Ares permanently attaches the ashes of the wife and child to Kratos's skin, which is why he's so pale white. Needless to say he weren't too pleased with this and with the help of another god goes on he war path to take down ares.
which he does, then takes his place as the god of war. Then in the sequel we learn Kratos has been starting too many wars and needs to chillaxe, so the other gods kick him out of the god club, so he kills a god or two, makes a deal with some titans, and marches with them back up to Olympias to kick some god ass. 3 mostly has you fighting your way across Sparta and over the bodies of gods to reach Zuse who turns out to be Kratos's father, go figure.
The games had a very simple but effective fast passed combat system, they were completely linear, and by the third game had gotten extremely violet and graphic. I think it's also worth pointing out the main character is a pretty nasty peace of work. He has a largely one track mind, focused on revenge and killing pretty much everyone/everything he meets, this includes innocent people.

I followed along with the series and it's spin offs from the first installment up till god of war 3, but I passed on ascension because by that point I was starting to get kind of tired of them, and with the way 3 ended I wasn't sure if I'd want to play another one any time soon, if it was even possible to make one after that. The main character Kratos, kills off all the greek gods, releasing a different plague with each one he kills, and by the end basically destroys the planet. The main character was also starting to get a bit too unlikable for me, so I passed on the prequel game that came out after 3. I kept hearing nothing but praise about the latest one so I figured I'd give it a shot. After destroying the greek world Kratos decides to settle down and start a new family in the Norse realm. seemed like it must have been going well up till his wife passed away, which is where the game starts and one of the local gods decide to pay Kratos a visit.
I think the story was really well presented in this game, maybe a little too well in fact. A problem this game has is it feels like it's a set up for things to come. The objective of the game is simply to take the wife's ashes to the tallest point in all the lands. You get side tracked a lot on the way there, and along the way tons of exposition and lore gets dumped on you that in the end doesn't really play into the game events at all. Characters will go on and on and on about Thor and Oden, but they never at any point show up in the game. They go on about how blood thirsty insane and vengeful thor is, but even even after killing Thor's kids half way into the game, Thor waits 3 years before making an off camera cameo appearance in a post credit bonus scene to drop in on Kratos and not say anything. .
Far as gameplay goes, Kratos felt really sluggish and heavy in this game. It didn't have the devil may cry style fast paced combat all the others had, instead it was more modern and grounded. Somehow everything felt slow, but I did eventually get used to it. Still felt weird by the end how he couldn't hop over boxes or small gaps, unless it's an approved direction, then you can leap a hundred meters without issue.
I was also happy to see they didn't do the modern gaming trope of turning everything now into a sandbox, up until I got to the sandbox hub area. It wasn't 'that' bad, but it still felt weird for a game series that's always been linear. So now they got you rowing around in a huge lake collecting random crap and knocking out a handful of side missions. Speaking of weird, they really cut down on the violence this time around. The game felt rather PG aside from some swearing. The main character throughout the game tries to do this father of the year thing while trying to be a better person I guess, maybe a good role model too I'm not sure, but it's bizarre coming from a blood thirsty psychopathy who once tore a guy's head off to use it as a flashlight. Maybe the idea is having that son changed him for the better? What wasn't changed for the better is this horrible armor/perk/ whatever system in which you have to hunt and grind and kill this or that for random item drops to craft and upgrade slightly better armor than what you had before. That's one of the things I felt should have stayed with MMOs. Before every weapon, skill, and piece of armor you got was via story progression. Seems like just another lazy way of padding out run times. It also ran oddly bad at times. You wouldn't expect a console game, let alone a first party big budget game to have FPS issues, but sure enough...
The way they avoided having any loading screens was pretty neat, although there's a shortcut quick travel room you enter which became pretty apparent was just a place to keep you while the game loads the area you're quick traveling to. It's a bit surprising they decided to get rid of quick time events when I think this was 'the' quick time event game, but all in all I'm not sure if those are really a great idea at this point. A real pleasant surprise indeed was realizing part way into the game that the VA for Kratos this time around was a main character in one of my favorite tv shows, Stargate.
The ending felt pretty disappointing. Sure you did what you set out to do from the start, but by then so many other things get established and built up, you expect something more to come of it all. A number of side stories have no real resolution for that mater, you basically just go home. So in the end it just feels like the foundation for a sequel. It was certainly a pretty decent game in spite of it all, I can understand why it was so popular, but it just felt like such a huge cock tease. Not that I don't think the game can be enjoyed on it's own, I'd certainly recommend it, but I'd think most people would have a "that's it?" view by the end. The squeal should certainly be interesting if nothing else.

>>14119
After that I played Infamous second son. Definitely something I wouldn't have bothered with if the game wasn't included with others I bought. I played the first two but it's been so long I can't remember much of anything about them aside from the fact you play as a dude with super powers freeing a city, and there's a big focus on morality. It also had a pretty decent ending that made me think they really shouldn't make another game in the series. Which of course they did anyway. Second son has it's own story, characters, setting ect. The main character instantly comes across as the studio trying too hard to appeal to younger demographics, it almost felt pathetic. It played decently enough, but it's very short, the map feels tiny, and while somewhat original the super powers you get make little sense. You can use smoke, neon, and video (then cement after beating the game)powers, which all play similar but have minor differences. For whatever reason you can't switch between them easily and need to drain a fuel source to switch powers. Smoke was common place with video being really hard to find. In the story a militarized police like force tasked with hunting down super powered people, is tracking down a few who escape in a Indian reservation(?), the leader of the group tortures and mutilates the locals while trying to get info on the escaped prisoners, and leaves them suffering from something only she can reverse. Your character accidentally receives powers from one of the escaped prisoners, and so you head to seattle washington, where this group set up base and occupied the town, so you can confront the leader and make her fix the people back home.
It wasn't a terrible game but it's also not something I'd recommend. The original two were much better, and there's not really much about it that stands out as being unique or interesting. It was almost tempting to play it again to see what the other morality line might be like, but couldn't say I cared enough to bother.


After that I played Uncharted 4.5. A spin off of the uncharted series focused around some side characters from Uncharted 2 and 4.
The game seemed like it was largely reusing resources from 4 while trying to squeeze some extra use out of the engine from the game. This too was a pretty short game and only needed one sitting to finish it. It had a nice intro but quickly drops you on a tiny open world map while making it seem like that's pretty much the whole game, luckily getting past that it turned out to just be 2/3 of the game, The uncharted games are supposed to be rather linear after all so it'd be weird to day the least if the whole thing took place in a sandbox. The plot isn't anywhere near as interesting as that of the previous games and the adventure doesn't feel nearly as earned. There's very little built up or investigation leading up to where the treasure is located. In the other games half the time was spent just trying to figure out where to go. Everything else plays pretty much like Uncharted 4 since it seems to use the same engine and reused a number of the same mechanics. If nothing else I'd say I liked it more than the PS vita uncharted game which itself wasn't even that bad.

>>13743
>>13841
I just finished this game as well. I thought the gameplay was actually difficult on my first playthrough (so before the first ending) because of the camera/lock-on mechanics, which felt a bit uncomfortable. I hated the game on the first play-through but I was quite impressed by the cinematic start of the third story-route. But then, I was also quite overwhelmed by the various endings.
As for Emil, I found his little side-story to be more interesting than the main plot of the game and I think it would have been interesting if they had expanded on that.

>>14135
For more on Emil I'd say just play the previous game.

>>14135
>>14136
The Nier Replicant remake is releasing soon so you might want to look into that.

>>14135
Actually, I forgot to mention one major flaw in the game: you cannot open the items menu when your character is performing any sort of action, which could be jumping or staggering after being attacked (the staggering is also annoying, as it happens after every attack from an enemy). There were lots of moments where the game set me up against waves of enemies and I was tapping the esc button every few seconds while stuck in a cycle of dodging and staggering, in the hopes of finally being allowed to use a healing item, only for it to just pause the game again. Accessing the menu was the only way to use these healing items by the way. Even Dark Souls allows you to use healing potions in the middle of a boss fight.
>>14137
Yes, I will.

Just finished Rabi Ribi. It was a pretty fun MetroidVania type game. It did have a bit of stuff I didn't like, such as having some areas locked off by cutscenes "Hmm, I shouldn't go there yet..." even though they were accessible. To get to these areas one would have to occasionally talk to NPCs, and it wasn't always clear that they were unlocking those areas. In any case, the boss fights were pretty fun, sort of like a bullet hell boss. It seems to have a lot of additional content as well after the "last" boss.

Currently starting Zwei: The Arges Adventure. It's apparently a PSX game, but I'm playing the Steam release. The controls are kinda awkward, but it's not that bad. It has some humor which reminds me of Tohno when examining objects.

SFV got a new update & new mechanic after 5 years.

https://soranews24.com/2021/03/04/getting-divorced-in-the-new-story-of-seasons-video-game-means-you-have-to-kill-your-kids/

>>14195
Divorce shouldn't even exist in the 2D realm, especially in SoS' world. This is the dimension of pure love--immaculate, undying feelings. Unless there's some supernatural force breaking people up, I find it distasteful. But, if it must exist, I want it to make the players who use the mechanic to feel like shit; SoS does a good job here in that respect, I guess. (And it should be noted that in previous games, one can break up with their girlfriend/boyfriend, but not their spouse.)
Also, what's up with being able to only have one kid? The Wii games allowed you to have two.

>>14195
Maybe they're better off?

currently playing: nioh, nigger automata (i already finished the whole game on console but restarted again because of its popularity peaking.) atelier ryza ever darkness.
want to play: dark souls remastered. dark souls 2, original demon's souls on ps3.

Played Death stranding. Wasn't nearly 'as' weird and wtf as the original trailers made it out to be. it was still weird with a lot of things that made little or no sense, but it kinda works. I mean I could nitpick the hell out of the game, from why people don't use underground tunnels for transport, to covering cargo and structures with styrofoam or other materials that take ages to naturally degrade, but whatever. The acting was pretty good for most characters with only a few exceptions like "fragile" who sounded oddly timid and nervous for most of her lines, and this japanese girl who was very obviously struggling with English and who's lines all sounded like she was reading off a scrip during recording. Was kind surprised to see that not just the main character but dang near every character in the game is a celebrity on some level, so decent acting is to be expected. High costs would of course come with that, so I can't blame them for the somewhat out of place Monster product placement.
I typically hate fetch quests in games, but it's the whole point of the gameplay so I can give it a pass here, even if it's largely used to pad out the runtime. It was novel at first slowly walking from point A to B and having to pay extra attention to the path I walk on, but I was pretty glad to get a bike because walking got tiresome by that point. Bit annoying that for such importance they place on you and the job you're doing, they couldn't let you barrow one of the trucks they keep parked outside their distro centers and never use.
The terrain gets to be so bad in some places though that it's almost better to walk than to deal with the horrible horrible vehicle physics. Bikes and trucks would randomly decide their tires were made of ice, and othertimes randomly accelerate to break neck speeds from a dead stop, and don't stop easily after that. Worst thing is how every time you get near the game's enemies, cars would stall up for a few seconds, and when you get real close a 10 second long animation plays every time if you haven't updated the game, which I couldn't do. Luckily once you unlock Ziplines, that pretty much breaks the game. They let you fly over terrane, and if you go crazy like I did you can set them up across the entire map and zip from one end to the other easily.
The game is meant for online play so you can have limited interaction with other players. You use stuff they leave behind, drop off their packages, and they've got signs they can place all over. I played from start to finish offline, so my game map was entirely barren.
Decent enough game, but it sure got frustrating at times, tedious at others. Took me 100 hours to finish it when most of that was just going back and forth over and over. Might not have bothered to finish it if I had any slightest bit of a life. Bosses were all piss easy too. You almost have to go out of your way to fail with them. Here's looking forward to whatever weird stuff Kojima puts out next.

I forget if it was before or after that, but I also played Ace Compbat 7.
You can really tell the dev team had all kinds of problems during the making of this. Not just because of the cardboard dog. It plays fine, great even, but the story seems to have a number of gaps in it with some weird pacing and jumping around. Sometimes things made absolutely no sense at all, if things weren't just weird. I didn't notice any issues with graphics at least aside from some instruments that didn't work properly in first person view mode. Normally that'd be "whatever", but they expected people to play this in VR, so that kinda thing would stand out a LOT if you did. It felt like playing an older game in the series, which was dead to me after the call of duty wanna be entry. The cloud and rain gimmick is hella gimmicky, and things don't even work that way, but it was neat looking if nothing else. After having done a lot of real flying I found myself noticing a lot of little things I never paid much attention to in past entries, even if it's all very unrealistic it still has some nice attention to detail if you're looking for it.

>>14220
I really loved Ace Combat 7, just flying in it felt great. I actually really enjoyed the narrative, but not for the overarching elements which are really just ways to set up cool moments. My favourite moment in the game is in the Daredevil mission as the people in the tower fight to disable the Arsenal Bird's shield and the music swells to a climax just as they manage to do it. Moments like that really make you feel like a hero.

>>14225
Generally the AC games do a good job of making you feel like a hero, but 7 I dunno. Somehow it didn't feel very natural the way ground units would cheer on three strikes/stripes (whichever it was). I think it was during this installment when it dawned on me you're basically playing as a super hero who's powers are being invulnerable to gforce, and being able to carry ludicrous amounts of missiles, as well as unlimited machine gun rounds.
The game was certainly good even with it's technical issues, which are only really noticeable I thought in the story. It has almost everything you'd know and love from the past games and more. Even the cheesy bad and over the top voice acting felt right at place and reminded me of the old games. I tried playing it with jp audio at first but had trouble following along so I switched it back. The translations aren't great, and a lot of characters talk in ways no human ever would, but that just adds to the delicious cheesiness of the franchise.
I think my favorite mission was defending Stonehenge while they tried to get the cannon working. It wasn't until then that it really dawned on me that this takes place in the world of previous ace combat games, specifically 4 which I think that and the mass driver were featured in. It wasn't just nostalgia of course, your help or lack of had a pretty noticeable effect on ground tropes, which made it a bit gratifying when you'd save them and they'd cheer you on for it.

>>14226
Yeah that mission is fantastic. I really like how the ground chatter changes as the mission advances there. Definitely another highlight. It's really satisfying to see the Arsenal Bird go down afterwards. That stuck with me because I thought the sound of it falling to pieces sounded like a death wail.

Few other games I've played recently.

Empires of the Undergrowth
It's a RTS where you manage an ant colony. seeing it gave me some flashbacks to SimAnt which I played a bit of when I was younger. Honestly don't have much negative to say about it, it looked and played well. Was surprisingly challenging even on normal mode for the mid to late levels, but not in a way that felt frustrating but rather made me want to get better at it. Actually found myself repeating levels a number of that I finished just for the heck of it, even though I usually don't do that. It looks nice, runs well even on my laptop, and is a bit addictive.
My only complaint is that the game is very much an Early access title. I thought it was weird while playing it because the game seemed 100% fine. I expected this ant game to have more bugs than it did...
The thing is though, it's one of 'those' early access games where the game comes to a dead stop. Which again is weird though because the place the game stops could easily be the actual end of the game, it certainly felt like the last boss level if nothing else. If nothing else it's nice to know they plan to add more content later on, once they do I might revisit the game.


The original Watch Dogs.
Time has been flying so far lately I can't be sure how many weeks ago it was I played this, might have even been more than a month or two by now. Doesn't feel that long though.
First time I tried playing it was near release. It ran like garbage, and was a buggy mess. I uninstalled and moved on. I ended up with a copy of it for PS4 and as such decided to give it a try. I guess thanks to years of patches it's actually playable now. It still had it's share of issues, but nothing game breaking. Plays a lot like a GTA game, with some "hacking" gimmicks. Story didn't really seem that bad all things considered. Sure felt it's age though with all the meme they used for road sign hacking. What is this I don't even, all your base, ect. They have a tenancy to portray hacking in the streamlined Hollywood way, in which it's essentially magic, but for the sake of a videogame I can't say I blame them. Their portrayal of hackers could have used a bit of work too, but whatever. I'll try out the sequals sooner or later. I didn't even know this had any, but when I checked it turned out to have a few. Guess that just flew right under my radar.

Hobo: Tough Life
I don't really like multiplayer stuff much but a friend who insists on making me play games with him convinced me to try this one out (pretty sure half the reason was to mock me and my current living situation). Seemed like an interesting concept for a game so I figured why not.
Turned out to be really boring and tedious, true to the hobo life I guess. The game mostly seemed to be about trying to stay alive. hunger cold sickness ect are a constant issue, annoyingly so in fact. Felt like I couldn't make any progress because I was too busy constantly rummaging for food. But no mater how much I ate the hunger kept draining quickly, like many other gauges/meters in fact
After starving to death then being beaten to death, I ended up getting tired of the game and gave myself nearly unlimited money. Bought all the best stuff in the game, and even with nearly unlimited access to money and supplies, the hideout was a pain to work on because every single item you craft requires an annoying minigame. One of those games where you have to stop the arrow on the right spot. usually I'm not bad with those but in this game I couldn't judge the speed worth a damn. Dude I played with didn't seem to do much better at it. Almost seemed rigged. He got pretty bored of the game quickly too so we called it quits.

Currently on Yakuza kiwami.
I played the Ps2 version ages ago, but didn't keep up with the series. Got back into it when someone gave me a copy of Zero. Great game that was, and packed with a surprisingly massive amount of content. Think it took me more than 100 hours to finish it.
I couldn't remember much of anything about the original game, so kiwami seemed like a nice refresher. Uses a lot of the same character models music elements, with a few of the side games being carried over which I don't think were in the original, Mainly the Tamiya 4wd game. It was actually pretty nice seeing them continue the story from that side game now that it's like 15 years later, and a couple of those people never really moved on with their lives. The repating fights with Majima feel as tacked on as they are, but they're not as hard as the game makes it seem, and it's easy to avoid them most of the time anyway.
Playing zero before this really helped the game out a lot, since it helps establish a lot of these characters and the relationships they have/had, which this game didn't get across all that well. I also think I had a problem with forgetting and mixing up side characters, who is who and what not, but again playing zero helped a lot with that. Seems like the game also includes the fighting styles from Zero, which helps spice things up a bit. I forget but I think the original version may have just had one fighting style.
I can't remember if it's really the case or not, but the plot is kinda ridiculous with one of the key components feeling very obvious while never once crossing the minds of any characters.
See, The game starts off with the main character having the hots for this girl Yumi. The girl gets kidnapped by a yakuza boss who tries to rape her, your buddy kills the guy to stop the guy and you take the heat for it so your bro and Yumi can get away, going to prison for ten years in the process.
Ten years later, you get out, and meet up with this ten year old kid who's looking for her mom, who as it turns out is your girls very similar looking sister, a sister you didn't know she even had. Your girl Yumi meanwhile is now missing. The sister seals a bunch of money from the Yakuza and leaves behind the ring you gave Yumi. It feels painfully obvious our boy got cucked, but part of me wants to not believe it.

Been trying to knock out console games while I can since I might not have the luxury of a stable power supply in the coming months. I'll probably move over to the Switch since that has a rechargeable battery that I can charge and run off of solar power.

>>14231
I've recently finished Yakuza 5 and 6 as well, finally completing the mainline series featuring Kiryu. 0 is undoubtedly the best game in the series. It's probably the only game in the series where I bothered to finish up all the side stories/mini games. The yakuza series' plot are always outrageous, if you're planning on continuing on with the rest of the series just wait until you reach 3 and 4. It's the first two games I completed so I don't mind it much but those two are infamous amongst fans of the series. The progression of time and seeing recurring characters with the passage of time is certainly one of the best things about the series, for that reason alone I would encourage you to play the other games.

>>14232
Yeah I fully intend to. I haven't really heard much about them, so it'd mostly be a clean slate. I've got kiwami 2 ready to be installed once I'm done with this one. I kinda hope the pocket racer makes another appearance, but if he does I guess it'd mean things didn't work out with him.
You mentioned the main line games, but one I was curious about was the dead souls entry. Is that even canon? Seemed pretty odd to take the series in a zombie horror direction.

>>14233
Yeah, it's difficult to avoid spoilers nowadays but fortunately Yakuza spoilers aren't too common on the net unlike for example, Persona. Kiwami 2 is great and I hope you will enjoy it, it uses the new dragon engine which is different from most of the series however and some people don't really like how it feels. Pocket Circuit Fighter and the Tamiya mini-game is definitely one of the more memorable side stories but it wasn't a thing until 0 which was only released after 3, 4 and 5. Dead Souls is a spin-off and isn't canon.

Decided to pick up where I left off in the last entry of the 3DS Story of Seasons games. Given this guy's background, I shouldn't be (pleasantly) surprised that he said this. Love when there's dialogue like this that contrasts with the generally positive, relaxing, and cute atmosphere; really helps bridge a connection with the characters.

I've been replaying WoTS4, it's as fun as I remembered. A supposed sequel was cancelled and a dungeon crawler/roguelike spin-off was made in its stead, I hope that there will be a new entry in the series in the near future.

Finally completed Yakuza 7. The move to turn the game into an RPG bothered quite a number of people but it didn't worry me quite as much, it certainly changed the feel of the game but it didn't make it any less enjoyable in my opinion. The only downside might be that it gives less satisfaction of beating down characters that put you off the wrong way. What did concern me initially were the new protag and new cast of characters, it would be unfair and nigh impossible to compare them to the old guards but the characters turned to be not as unlikeable as I had thought they would be and there are even a couple of memorable ones. There are parallels between the circumstances the protag, Kasuga and Kiryu of the past games went through but the differences in personality leads to different outcomes. Kasuga is a lot more emotional and expressive/social in contrast to the stoic Kiryu and the creators apparently had it in mind to make him a more relatable character as opposed to the more ideal Kiryu. Plot wise, I would say that the writer have become somewhat better at covering the weaknesses that is often seen in the yakuza series although it might also be helped by Kasuga's personality. There are still occasions where the flow and progression of the plot feels a little odd but there are some really memorable moments in the game that makes up for it. As with previous series, there are ridiculous plot twists but nothing quite as bad or absurd as some of those in past games. There are a lot of references to old RPGs, most notably being Dragon Quest. If I'm not mistaken Yuji Horii might even have contributed to the game. The new setting, Yokohama, is also much bigger and metropolitan than Kamurocho or at least it seems so to me and had me somewhat overwhelmed at the beginning. It's a great game overall and I would rank it as being one of the better game in the series. It's unfortunate but I had to play the game on reduced setting due to my aged PC. Yakuza 7 certainly marks the changing of times as well as the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.

Pokemon Go
You can't even challenge a fellow P-Go gamer to a pokemon duel. What's the point then?!?

>>14307
collecting for the sake of collecting?

The World Ends With You on Switch and Persona 3.

Anyone have any thoughts on Muse Dash?
I'm trying it and I feel a mixture of really liking and somewhat disliking the art and I can't pinpoint why

>>14311
I bought it last time it was on sale and dirt cheap.
It came across like a trap because the base game felt a little like a demo and the DLC is where they get you. Call me a weeb, but I was kind of annoyed 70% of the music that comes with the base version is in Chinese, and you have to pay extra for the glorious Nippon tunes. The art might be Chinese too which could be the issue you're having, I know the way it's animated is certainly a bit unusual looking. I ended up pirating the switch version with all the music. It certainly can be fun gameplay wise. Really gives off that arcade music game feeling.

>>14312
Chinese art huh, and the girls speak japanese, I guess they knew chinese wouldn't sound as good.
What a strange product. But yes the gameplay is fun, really dopamine inducing, not at all the Miku replacement I was looking for though.

I basically grind my irl job for paying back a loan so meanwhile I waste time in mmos nowadays, got back into FFXIV because of a "friend" but I don't find it too enjoyable so usually get back to EVE Online.

An offline time-sink would be preferred because I have trash mobile connection but I played most of the Neverwinter Nights modules I was interested in so I'm not sure where to go now, really enjoyed Elegia Eternum & Excrucio Eternum.

>>14309
How am I suppose to train my pokemon then? I needs to duel.

I played a game called Head Lander. It's a side scrolling platformer with a 70s sci-fi aesthetic. You play as a flying head that can take over bodies. Story is that human kind collectively dumped fleshy bodies and uploaded themselves to android bodies, and your head is the only human head left in the galaxy. You help a resistance movement trying to go back to human bodies and fight off a dictator ai that's experimenting on what's left of humanity. Wasn't a half bad game with a decent gimmick and the style it was in was kind of amusing.

After that played I am Bread. It's a very short and simplistic physics based game where you play as bread dropped into a space like a kitchen or living room, with the goal of getting toasted. The challenge is finding a way to get from point A to B without getting dirty and inedible. This means not touching the floor, water, or anything gross. It's a game you can easily finish in a few hours, and seemed like it was geared to youtubers and playing as friends watch.

From there I played the PS4 spiderman game. It had a lot of praise behind it and it's from a studio I like, so while I don't often bother with capeshit games I figured it was worth a try. The only other ones I can think of that I've played are the Arkham games, and for the same reason in fact. The praise is certainly understandable. It handles well, makes the city feel big and grand, but not tedious to traverse since half the fun is swinging around. Combat works well, felt very precise, but all the dodge spamming with occasional punches during rare openings was really hell on my fingers during longer play sessions. I also liked the verity of activities they managed to come up with to keep things from getting stale. The story was pretty good overall, but not without a couple issues. [spoiler]The way doc oct went from leaning to evil, to full on evil mastermind with a half dozen super powered henchmen under his command, felt abrupt and like a chapter was missing. Likewise, it seemed weirdly pointless having villains like scorpion and vulture get introduced just to take part in a single boss fight each. Might have been nice if they did a bit more with the characters.

I went into it thinking it might be it's own story, not having anything to do with other marvel characters. Didn't take long to start noticing a bunch of references to not just the MCU characters but also The Defenders characters too, which was surprising. The problem with this is why events start out as the sort of thing a friendly neighborhood crimefighter can handle alone, things get progressively more and more serious as things go on. Much like with non-avenger MCU movies, it starts to beg the question why aren't the others doing anything to help? I guess you could call it nitpicking, but when the biggest building in the city is the avengers town, and the city is going to hell, you can't blame a person for wondering why they aren't there.

From there I played Mario Sunshine for the first time. I was surprised to see how brutally technical and challenging the game was. It was during a very simple race across the beach that I realized what I was in for. In this race, losing meant not only dying but being kicked to the hub world too. I learned from others that is has some infamously hard and down right aggravating levels to it. I didn't struggle as much with the same maps others named, but I did find myself getting a little frustrated at times, with some of the hardest levels I found being the ones where you navigate floating objects in space, and falling off means dying and starting all over. There was also the occasional cheap trick that could cause an insta death if you're not being careful. I didn't 100% the game because after finishing the main campaign and collecting all the standard "shines" and a couple extra, pretty much the only ones left were from collecting 100 coins on each map and challenge modes of maps I had already cleared. Kind of felt like there wasn't much of a point in bothering.

At the moment I'm half way into the remake of Yakuza 2.
Kinda funny how right off the bat, the kid you save in the previous game fugs right the heck off and stays out of the game so you can 'do your thing'. It's also pretty neat that the game acknowledges you dang near single handedly crippled the organization, leading to a power vacuum and all the problems that come with that.
I really hope future games have other locations to explore. While seeing these two little segments of towns evolve over the years is neat, after three games in the same two locations it's getting a bit old. They certainly seem to be reusing various elements a lot in these games I've noticed,
I find myself wondering a lot if if Kiwami has added content that wasn't in the original version to make it fall more in line with yakuza 0, or if it was always there and 0 just went that far to flesh out all the off hand references to past events in these days. Like if the only reason Majima works the clubs in 0 and looks the way he does in that game, is all because of a joke in a mini game in yakuza 2. Speaking of, I really liked the segments where characters just hang out and talk about random topics totally unrelated to the story. Really helps in making the characters feel more real and fleshed out. Especially the one where the hard to understand characters with low gritty rough voices, make fun of each other for being so hard to understand, challenging each other to repeat what someone just said or do tongue twisters. That'd easily be one of my favorite moments of the series so far, not that there's a shortage of them mind you.
You know, I thought it would have bothered me more than it did that they removed the different fighting styles and leave you with just one, but in the previous games I favored one per character more often than not anyway.
Maybe it's my imagination, but these games sure seem to have some very casual racist undertones to them. Putting aside potentially offensive caricatures of foreign characters, they seem to frame Chinese and Koreans a bit like human garbage or rodents, which one cop in this particular game seemed to have 0 fugs about exterminating like such.
Gotta say, out of all the mini-games this has, it still confuses me why they don't have a playable pachinko game in accessible parlors. Seemed like that'd be a given. Speaking of gambling, I was a little concerned when I saw they removed the rulette game, since saving before playing that is something I often do in games to make massive amounts of cash, but then as it turns out the cabaret club and construction rts minigames are crazy good ways of making money. Now if only there was more to actually use the money on...