What game are you playing?

[Xero]

With this game, I'm gonna take my time and grind.  Whenever I play RPG's I tend to stay put and grind till I'm over leveled (about 5 to 6 levels higher than I should be).  I did this same thing in the Secret of Mana remake and everything was a cakewalk.  Somehow I don't think it will be the same with this game. 

Probably going to go back to Kirby Star Allies to check out Wave 2 dream friends.  Daroach and Adeline look awesome!

[Speed Racer]

I have to review Forsaken Remastered and Overcooked 2 for my friend's podcast. Can't say anything that constitutes as a review, so you'll just have to listen! Or wait until the embargo is off.

During the ultimate sale I picked up Just Cause 3, Saints Row IV: Reelected, Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition, Killer Instinct: Definitive Edition, Overcooked, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, and Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Mega Battle. I also got Decay: The Mare from a friend for free.

[Johncarllos]

Ori and Blind forest is a real treat.


I just picked up an Oculus Rift, so I'm playing all that stuff. Good games, good challenges, and fully functional room scale out of the box. their requirements for space are a little stingy though.

I have punched my walls a few times already, haha.

[TheRedPriest]

Is that retail yet or digital?  I have the first Ori, and just bought my friends Xbone for $25.

[Johncarllos]

Ori and the Blind Forest is the first game, followed by the Will of the Wisps. Pretty sure the blind forest is available retail. No idea bout will of the wisps.

[Speed Racer]

Yeah, Blind Forest is available for retail. I think it's $25-30 at Walmart.

[TheRedPriest]

I have that one.  I was wondering about the 2nd.

[Johncarllos]

Sometime next year is all the info about it right now, as far as I can find. Definitely gonna pick it up. when it comes out.

Apparently it will be one of those 'Buy on any Microsoft platform and play anywhere' games.

[TheRedPriest]

I restarted La-Mulana after 2 years.  I'm going to try to beat it without a guide, though I suspect I'll have to cheat a few times, as even though the remake made some of the puzzles less obtuse, there's still a lot of bull##### in the game.

[Speed Racer]

Picked up Batman: Return to Arkham (the first two Arkham games with prettier graphics), Metro bundle, Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell, and Crypt of the Serpent King.

Had to review F1 2018 for my friend's podcast. There's a definite curve if all you've ever played is arcade racers like me, and holy ##### is there a lot to the game, but it is beautiful and challenging. Easy recommendation from me.

Currently playing through the campaign of Star Wars: Battlefront II (the EA one). The game looks great and plays pretty well, but the campaign is so ho-hum with tons of ##### we already heard before from the Expanded Universe. All they had to do is make her have untapped Force powers that she suddenly discovers and boom, we would've had a standard late 90s/early 00s Star Wars story. I'm glad I only paid $9 for this game.

[Xero]

Replaying Dad of Boy with New Game+ Mode.

[Mikero]

Yeah Spider-Man is a lot of fun.

[TheRedPriest]

Finally got Exile's End in from Limited Run Games.  It's a lot rougher than I thought it would be.  I'm disappointed with it.

[Mikero]

Is the gameplay itself rougher or the actual physical parts that Limited Run made?

[TheRedPriest]

The former.  The game play is a bit jankey.  Controls are rough and the beginning where you only have a rock to throw at enemies to kill them, has the WORST arc/trajectory to do what it's there to do.  No save spots or fast travel.  Real time inventory/weapon/item swap.  Item drop rates are awful.  It has a lot of flaws and rough edges.  And that's not even taking into account the narrative side of the game, which sets up some neat stuff and does nothing with it.  If it was a minimalistic basic set up for the game like Super Metroid, that would be fine, but it sure sets up a much more ambitious and detailed scenario and then drops the ball entirely with no pay off or detail.

[Speed Racer]

Playing through Just Cause 3. The missions aren't particularly fun, but going around and liberating the different cities and bases usually are. Half of the time I'm like "this is bull#####, I should just delete this game off my harddrive" and the other half I'm having a blasty-blast.

[LCrazy11]

doom 2016 is a lot of fun and the graphics are great, just turn off motion blur and max the field of view to feel even faster

[Xero]

Eagerly awaiting Doom Eternal now.  Holy ##### that gameplay looks fun as #####. 

[TheRedPriest]

doom 2016 is a lot of fun and the graphics are great, just turn off motion blur and max the field of view to feel even faster

I don't care for some of the redesigns.  Cyber Demon looks like ##### in DOOM 2016.  Also, the music, if you want to call it that, is little more than screeching noise, especially compared to the sophisticated compositions of the original or Doom 2.  It's just random electric grating with no solid melody.

[Xero]

*Not Liking BFG Division*
*Not Liking Rip & Tear*

I liked both DOOM I/II and 2016 OST's.

[LCrazy11]

doom 2016 is a lot of fun and the graphics are great, just turn off motion blur and max the field of view to feel even faster

I don't care for some of the redesigns.  Cyber Demon looks like ##### in DOOM 2016.  Also, the music, if you want to call it that, is little more than screeching noise, especially compared to the sophisticated compositions of the original or Doom 2.  It's just random electric grating with no solid melody.

the music is just a bunch of random noise, as in it is a bunch of audio clips that the game switches to to adapt to what you are doing

[Johncarllos]

I loved the music in DOOM 2016, they did some pretty crazy stuff with it too, like slipping pentagrams into the spectrograph as seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzFit0nldf4


I'm looking forward to Eternal as well. Just straight up fun.

[Majikn]

I played The Last Guardian, finally.

As far as Ueda games go, I... don't know what to think. For a game about bonding with a large animal, I suppose it does that very well. I feel like animal companions are the perfect workaround to imperfect AI. It's weird when a human character does something blatantly stupid, but when an animal does it, it's adorable at best, annoying but understandable at worst. Even when you credit an animal with a decent amount of intelligence there is still a barrier of communication present.

I think for me, though, my favourite is still Ico. From the music to the atmosphere to the gameplay.

It's also that there were times, when playing The Last Guardian, I found myself trying to do things I found counter-intuitive as a last resort only to find that that was what I needed to do. I was in the habit of exploring every last avenue before traipsing into an obvious ambush, or do pretty much anything that any reasonable person would expect would get themselves killed, or at best end in failure to avoid getting killed in already tense situations. There are these areas in the game that communicate great danger very clearly, which is both a good thing and a bad thing I find. I think these moments were relatively few, but they stick out, and it seems to me that they could have modified those set pieces to situations where what you needed to do seemed implausible and dangerous while still being clearly the only path forward, to convey what they meant to convey. Or at least make the alternative paths seem less plausible by comparison.

The game shows a fantastic effort and there are moments that really did work notwithstanding anything I just said, and I definitely look forward to whatever they do next.

[Xero]

Playing Undertale & Shovel Knight.

Doing a True Pacifist Run (never will touch genocide route ever)

[Teelio]

I attempted the Genocide Route but was locked and stuck with the Undyne fight. Seriously need to smack the hell out of the arrow keys and pray you don't take a lot of damage from those fast-as-##### spears.


I gave up after the 235657256345 attempt.

[Mikero]

Started, and got way into, Hyper Light Drifter on Switch.

Posted on:  2 October 2018, 13:39:35

Beat Hyper Light Drifter pretty quickly, I know it's years late compared to people who played it on other platforms but man that game is a gem.

Started playing Mother 3 now. It's my first time with it, finally, but it's good so far.

[Teelio]

Mother 3 is solid. It's good to see cult classics like the Mother series returning in popularity. I managed to play it about a year ago through, well.... unconventional methods. The rhythm-combo feature is a nice touch and the story is far more grim than it's predecessor.

Here's to hoping Nintendo decides to release a Western version and/or an Earthbound re-release in the near future, as SNES copies of Earthbound are ridiculously priced through eBay...

A 4th game seems as unlikely as a new F-Zero, but the fan-made Mother 4 looks to have the same charm as the other games. Sadly, there hasn't been any news in over 2 years. My guess is Nintendo dropped in to shut down the project... similar to how they handled AM2R and that Pokemon game creator program.

[NovaMan XP]

I played Mother 3 about a decade ago when that project was done, and I really did enjoy it then. I would love to replay it at some point, though part of me is hoping they'll finally give us it officially in English someday...

I still prefer EarthBound, but Mother 3 has its own charms as well. The first game though... I've never beaten it. Too tedious.

[Mikero]

So far aesthetically I prefer Earthbound. I think it's general locale of contemporary towns and cities with it's eclectic enemies and weirdo story just hit me a certain way, but since I've only just begun Mother 3 I don't know yet what to expect. The small town is interesting but those are the things that grabbed with EB, back in those days I'd never seen an RPG that wasn't high-fantasy. Character design is definitely similar but Mother 3 looks to take a bit more "out-there" with humans, which I like for variety. Either way, in both games any adult woman wearing lipstick looks creepy as all hell.

Can't deny some of Mother 3's gameplay improvements though. Saving via frogs is very welcome, as much as I love the charm of having to use your money to call your dad to save in EB.

Posted on: 10 October 2018, 14:53:18

^ That was written early into the game. The setting is more urban now, which is fun. As a kid that gripped me with what I'd seen of Earthbound but also the original Pokemon.

Red Dead 2nite, I'm very excited.

[NovaMan XP]

I played a bit of Red Dead last night but I was super tired and stopped after some intro stuff but so far I'm really enjoying it. I can't wait to get off work and go back into it already.

[Speed Racer]

Tried playing Battlefield 1, which I'm pretty sure the point of the game was "being a solider during this war #####ing sucked", and is not what I need in my life right now.

Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed is a ton of fun and is exactly what I need. I like the Skies of Arcadia level best.

[Mikero]

I played a bit of Red Dead last night but I was super tired and stopped after some intro stuff but so far I'm really enjoying it. I can't wait to get off work and go back into it already.

I have that issue. I'm not much farther than you (as of that post) but I tried to play when I was a bit tired and the game was far too overwhelming.

I'm really liking the game but I have a few little issues that niggle at me, like how small the boxes are that actually tell you how to do things, and how quickly they disappear. I also need to have a lot of trigger discipline with a DS4 because it's very easy to accidentally shoot. I'm finding it hard to be a good guy just because I keep messing up controls, haha

[NovaMan XP]

Same, I'm not a fan of the small UI, and the fact there's really no way to increase the size of it... the closest I got was making the minimap always at full size, which was a bit helpful.

I'm finally starting to understand how the cores work, but they didn't really explain them well in the intro.

I'm still getting used to all the new stuff... including the physics. I've tripped my horse riding like a moron too many times to count and every time it happens I feel really bad. But I am glad you can swim now. No more death from hip-deep water!

[Mikero]

YES. I'm glad you mentioned the tiny UI too. I figure they made it with longevity in mind, so people with larger and clearer televisions/monitors will be playing it in the future... But we're years away from full saturation on 4k TVs.

It really reminds me of playing XBox 360 before I got an HDTV, which is kind of funny 'cause that would have been back when I playing Red Dead Redemption in the first place.

I'm really liking the game but similar to what you said I'm frustrated with how quick and haphazardly they explain anything. Part of that is ALSO the UI since they will mention something very vaguely in the top top left while you're concentrating on the action.

Example 1: I accidentally hit someone with my horse and the cops came at me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw it said (way up in the top left) that I could just surrender and it showed the Triangle button. I pressed it, and my character grabbed the sherriff by his collar. Turns out it said to lock-on first but the time in which I could read that AND implement it was too short.

Example 2: Every time I hunt an animal the game tells me I can't harvest all of it and I need to dump some stuff from my satchel to do so. I open the satchel and I have empty slots in every category. I'll eat some food and make more, but still nothing will get added once I go back to the animal. This was especially frustrating because I managed to kill the first legendary bear almost immediately, but couldn't get any of that meat (just the pelt), which in my head-canon would be quite the boon for my camp.


Apparently there is a message log? I legitimately have never seen the game mention it, but I just looked that up now. Perhaps that will help. I mean... I not-so-recently breezed through 100%-ing Spider-Man in like a weekend without even trying all that hard, so I don't believe the problem is me getting too old for this #####. It's just a dark spot on an otherwise fun experience.

[Majikn]

I think right now I'm mostly just looking for something action RPG-ish that isn't a Souls game. I may get Skyrim for Switch because I still haven't really played that.

You might want to check out Hollow Knight.

It's an excellent game in it's own right, but it definitely has some dark-souls esque bosses and the rest of it is melee metroidvania. I put like 30 hours into it, loved it.

And all DLC is free and there's still more to come. One of my games of the year, 2017, easy.

So I avoided this one at first because mainly I didn't want something Dark-Souls esque in any sort of way, call it fatigue, but I must say... this game is fantastic.

I love the idea of old fantasy world mixed with an intelligent society of arthropods, which also happens to fit in perfectly with the ant farm style of world navigation and level design. I think that alone was a stroke of genius. It also has that way of bringing in the lore parts of Dark Souls and even though that lore is outright derivative in some parts, it shows that what some people really absolutely love about Dark Souls can be repackaged in a way that has intuitive design and fun, really well-balanced gameplay.

I'd probably compare the game more to Castlevania's DS titles but I'm having much more fun with it than I do with Castlevania.

I'm not finished the game yet but I just discovered an area that reminds me of the feeling I got when I discovered Anor Londo for the first time. Or for those who haven't played Dark Souls I could say... Hollow Bastion in Kingdom Hearts?

The ambience and music works so well, too.

I'm considering either Hyper Light Drifter or Blossom Tales afterwards.

[TheRedPriest]

Playing Death Mark on Switch.  It has a very nice creepy vibe to it.  Actually kind of reminds me of Fatal Frame insofar as the eerie feeling it gives me.

[Xero]

Tomorrow I'm going to start playing the Spyro trilogy on the PS4.  I enjoyed them back when I was younger.

[TheRedPriest]

Dropped that off my to pick up list the moment they confirmed it was a "download to be able to play off disc/cart" release.  So ##### em.  They lost a LOT of sales because of that.

[Xero]

Yeah that's a load of ass, but I've got a 1TB PS4 drive so I'll "deal with it"

Still, Activision is really #####ing up lately, especially with the whole Diablo Immortal debacle.

[TheRedPriest]

It's not really a matter of space, it's a matter of it's a bull##### thing to do.  There's no reason to buy a "retail" version of something if you have to download the rest of the game to make it work or have it all.  Essentially Spyro has no retail release because it's part digital download.  So ##### it and ##### the publishers.

[NovaMan XP]

Wait, they're STILL doing that even after the delay? That's lame.

[Mikero]

I don't think I've seen a single PS4 game that isn't "download off disc"...

I don't like it, but there was no way I was skipping Spider-Man or Red Dead. Those are games tailored almost specifically to me.

I'm considering either Hyper Light Drifter or Blossom Tales afterwards.

I know nowt about Blossom Tales, but obviously I'm a big pusher of Hyper Light Drifter lately.

[NovaMan XP]

I thought it was an online download for the other two games in the collection. Disc installs are fine, since Red Dead is enormous and the content is still on the disc. But I might've misread the Spyro thing.

[TheRedPriest]

I don't think I've seen a single PS4 game that isn't "download off disc"...

Not an install, but literally it's unplayable unless you download the rest of it from the server, like L.A. Noir on Switch.  They sell you 80% of the game and STILL make you download part of it.  It's also completely different from "day 1 50 gig patch but you can still play the game".  It's not a patch it's the actual game.

[Mikero]

Ahh gotcha.

[Johncarllos]

Batllefield V sucks. Worse in every way than 3. Like, even worse than fortnite. Still playing it. I stupidly paid for 1 month of Origin Access, I'm gonna use it.

[LCrazy11]

tried fortnite ironically, hated it then played elder scrolls oblivion and i love how it aged, i think i like it more than skyrim

[Mikero]

How does one try something ironically?

Anyway Fortnite isn't my thing but I don't see how it's "bad".

[NovaMan XP]

I haven't tried it but I'm pretty sure it's not for me either.

And personally, I loved Oblivion more than Skyrim, but Oblivion has aged horribly. But if you play it on PC you can at least mod out the stuff that bugs you... probably.

I'm finally at the end of Red Dead Redemption II, still haven't beaten it, but close. So far it's been a lot of fun. I'm hoping I can finish it tonight so I can focus all my attention on Pokémon Let's Go tomorrow.

[Mikero]

I tried it on Switch. It's fine, seems fun, but I just wouldn't bother over something like Splatoon 2.


I'm not even close to done Red Dead but now I'm more used to it and loving it.

I'll probably have to start Pokemon Let's Go while playing RDR2 and Mother 3 hahah