Messages

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

« on: December 03, 2024, 10:50:20 pm »

20 - Astro Bot (PS5 2024) - BEAT - Didn't realize I was right at the end of this game too lol Overall I think this is a pretty solid experience, it's kinda funny how it still feels like a tech demo, despite being a full length game, because a lot of the game is just like, "Here, looks at all these pretty visuals and physics items".  Not saying that in a bad way, but the game really loves showing that sort of stuff just for the heck of it.

I don't think I would put this game over something like a Super Mario Odyssey, but I had some good fun with it, no real complaints, they tried to have a lot of gadget variety and some of the bosses were pretty fun.  I feel like the only weak point I have is that there's so much just "REMEMBER THIS CHARACTER?!" and that can be nice in its own way, but I would've loved more of a focus on  outright Sony history characters, more levels built around them and their kits. 

We do get stuff like that with God of War, Horizon, Uncharted, Ape Escape, and there might have been one other I'm forgetting, but I personally would've loved way more of that.  Give me a Crash Bandicoot level, Jak & Daxter, Twisted Metal, whatever, that's more fun than having 100+ cameos.  There was a comment I saw that kinda hit it on the nose, where all these characters are treated more like "parade floats" than truly celebrating their history, which isn't terrible and I don't mean all this in a negative way also.

Good bit of fun though, I didn't 100%, might go back and finish up  the levels, I'm probably like 80 to 85% complete if I had to get, but I'll do that on my own time.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

« on: December 03, 2024, 07:41:57 pm »

29 - Dredge (PC 2023) - BEAT - Gotta love casual and lightly creepy indie games.  This reminds me a lot of Dave the Diver, get fish, upgrade your gear, follow through a story, nothing too crazy or challenging, but overall nice.  I actually experienced some elements of Dredge in Dave the Diver with a collab DLC they did that made a ton of sense to do.

Basically you are a guy on a boat that goes around catching fish to sell, making money, gathering scrap, upgrading your boat to get better gear, all while there's this creepy thing happening in the area that you need to solve the mystery of.  There's not much challenge to the game, you can certainly get hurt (Hull gets damage which causes gear to break and become unusable or damage and ruin fish/items, losing them in the process, though you can get it repaired at shipyards.  Very solid length, doesn't overstay it's welcome and while there's two DLC expansions, I think I'll save those till next year.

Overall had a good time, I do like Dave the Diver alot more if I had to pick as they are very similar ideas, just different executions of it, and there's just a lot more variety to do in that game compared to Dredge.  I do recommend Dredge though, solid time, been meaning to play it since last year, but Twitch came through with the rare free game I actually want to play.  I get so many free games from different platforms and almost never play any of them lol

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General / Re: Playstation 30th Anniversary

« on: December 03, 2024, 05:24:56 pm »

Fun note for PS5 folks that haven't found out already, but there's a limited time option that they just added that lets you tweak the theme abit so you can have a kinda goofy banner, but also audio from all era's of Playstation as your startup and menu.  Might just stick with PS1, but PS2 is also a possibility for me.  I really hope they change their mind on it being limited, it should be a permanent option.

As for my history, I didn't own a PS1, but I played it at a buddies house, the game I remember most there being Final Fantasy 7 as we played through that together.  I mostly played PS1 at a local card shop who had one so I would hang out there and play some of my favorite games on the system like Twisted Metal 2, Tekken 3, Crash Bandicoot, etc...

I went in proper with Sony on PS2, as I did eventually get an Xbox, but that was mostly just for Halo,  so I played most games of that era on PS2 and stuck with it with an original that I got for my Birthday and then bought myself a slim later on as I didn't need the HDD option for anything that I remember.

After that, I skipped PS3, went 360 that era, and didn't get a PS3 till sometime before the PS4 came out as family grabbed me a slim on the cheap and while there weren't a lot of games I was interested in, there were a few decent ones.

For PS4 I came back and got back into things for Sony, stuck through that, though I don't remember exactly when I got a PS4, maybe a couple years after it came out I think...It was probably a couple years before the Pro came out as I upgraded to that at the time.

And I'm here for PS5, enjoying certain games for sure, though not as much as in the past, but a lot of that is also because I'm a PC gamer primarily, meaning I mostly just go to console gaming for when very specific exclusives come out or I feel like it's a game that doesn't matter if I get it on PC or not, like most retro collection releases I tend to just buy for Switch or PS5 now.

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General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: December 03, 2024, 04:25:43 am »

For how many free games I get a year from different services, it's rare that I get one I actually want to play, but Dredge was one of them thanks to Twitch.  Been meaning to get it for awhile as it looked neat and it is! Put a bunch of time into it and it gives me very familiar vibes to what Dave the Diver was like when I played that.  Very casual game, nothing too challenging, mildly creepy, some okay story going on.  Something about these sorta games can get very addictive though  I think I'm most of the way through the game, it seems quite short, but that's good, I wasn't wanting another big 30+ hour game as I plan to try and spend this month mostly finishing up some other games as I'm close to beating Astro Bot and then can go try to finish FF7 Rebirth.

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General / Re: FPS, RPG, SIM ... where are you "at home"?

« on: December 01, 2024, 08:43:52 pm »

If I had to narrow it down, I'd say Action/Adventures games (Zelda, Soulslike stuff) and Shooters (Battlefield).  They are my usual go to experiences with probably Platformer being close third.

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General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: November 28, 2024, 12:22:30 am »

Decided to poke around Dead Island 2 again, maybe pick up the DLC I never got to later as going through Dying Light 2 and kinda not loving the game, I was sorta trying to remember back to this game, thinking I liked the general action more.  It's also abit stiff, heavy attacks do like this lock on animation strike depending on what weapon you have, but the action feels more visceral and violent here.  Also, super fast instant looting, I wanted that so bad in Dying Light 2, it feels so nice to just quick loot places and not have animation with everything lol  Game is dumb fun, might go through the whole game again, not sure yet as I need to finish 2 other games before the year is out.

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Off Topic / Re: What TV/Netflix show are you currently watching? (Megathread)

« on: November 24, 2024, 11:10:44 pm »

They pulled no punches with the end of Arcane.  What a damn good show this is.  I know this isn't the end of Arcane entirely, they tease a lot of stuff at the end for where stories will go, expanding past Piltover that we've stayed with, bringing in more characters and new stories to experience, I'm on board for whatever.  I always thought League had cool characters, but never an interesting way to experience the world, so if we can get quality shows, maybe they'll attempt them in different styles (Arcane is apparently one of the most expensive animated shows ever), but if they can still give good stories and characters, I'm into it.

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Modern Video Games / Re: Free to play games!

« on: November 22, 2024, 02:50:27 am »

A year after launch The Finals is releasing on PS4! Wow! Looking forward to checking it out.

Kinda wild it's going to be on PS4 honestly, wonder how it'll run as on my older PC, it wasn't the best.  I personally thought the game was just alright, the destruction is cool, but I found the modes abit boring other than one of them, which wasn't enough to keep me playing it.  If they ever brought in a bigger player count mode, like a 20 to 30 person TDM mode, that would be kinda the only way I'd get interested.

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Off Topic / Re: What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

« on: November 22, 2024, 01:29:17 am »

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom - You know, if you just ignore Shazam 2, Black Adam, and Flash, and look at Blue Beetle and this movie, these were good fun movies to go out on for the DCEU lol This is much like the first one, it's fun, colorful, fantasy adventure movie, does all the things right. 

I have no real complaints, like maybe they leaned a tad goofy in spots, especially the interactions between Arthur and his brother, Arthur feeling abit more..."Thor Ragnarok" levels of goofy, not that he was super serious in the last one, but tonally it starts to come across between him and Orm as that like Thor and Loki dynamic.  Might be a smidge unfair to say if it's a superhero brother combo where one is good and the other is bad/contentious, it must be compared to those two, but these movies don't exist in a vacuum and studios like to utilizes successful things from other movies.

Good watch though, I'd recommend it.  With me finished with the DCEU (Other than abandoning Shazam 2 part way in, I think this, the first Aquaman, The Suicide Squad (2021), and Blue Beetle are my favorite movies of the era.  Parts of Wonder Woman, Man of Steel, and Shazam were fine.  Everything else was either awful, or just middling to me.  Really hopeful this next era of DC is alot better.

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Off Topic / Re: What TV/Netflix show are you currently watching? (Megathread)

« on: November 21, 2024, 05:13:58 am »

Arcane Season 2 Act 1 & 2 - Technically not over, but just binged through them.  It's insane how good this show is, like it's do everything right.  Great characters, great story, standout visuals, that this is in a television show (One that's wildly expensive and it shows), is nuts.  So much good music, action, mystery, and I'm tearing up and it's not even the end of the season, the final act out in 2 days.  What a damn good show.

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General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: November 21, 2024, 01:23:39 am »

Was looking forward to STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl, been such a long wait for it, but unfortunately it released in not the best state.  It runs well enough for me, but there's some definite areas of improvement I'm seeing and I think I'd rather come back to it next year after some patches to clean things up, maybe even add some things like deeper survival mechanics perhaps if possible as I think it has a real solid base to build off of.

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Off Topic / Re: What TV/Netflix show are you currently watching? (Megathread)

« on: November 20, 2024, 02:00:24 am »

Penguin is fantastic.  I was worried that the hype around it wasn't going to match up, that happens sometimes for me, but this works, it's a great crime drama and this version of Penguin is just the most absolutely irredeemable, cruel, slimy, piece of garbage possible, a true villain.  Collin Farrell is amazing in the role, like he just disappears into this character completely.  Great story too, it's all very grounded, but because it's in this Gotham setting, there's just this extra bit of crazy to it, but they never go full on with it like the Gotham show did.  Before I wasn't sure how much I wanted another ground Batman setting, I like Batman when it's more like the animated series, but "The Batman" was great, this is great, I can't wait for more in this setting.

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General / Re: Your Top 5 Video Game Sound Tracks

« on: November 19, 2024, 03:04:49 am »

Thinking about some of my favorite stuff these days, so much of it has turned into pure metal lol

Doom Eternal - It's a hard pick between the first and second game, but I think the second hits more for me.
Brutal Legend - This one feels like a cheat because it's just a collection of great metal songs, but it has good original music too.
Metal: Hellsinger - All original music, great singers chosen to bring a voice to it, love it.
Guilty Gear: XRD - This one is another hard one as GG has always had great music, but this game was a big style shift for the series and I think overall it's damn good, continued on into Strive.
Banjo-Kazooie - And here's the odd one out, but I love the music for the original game so much.  A lot of Rare games have incredible music due to folks like Grant Kirkhope, Robin Beanland, and David Wise, but BK has always been an amazing game for me and I adore the music.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

« on: November 17, 2024, 11:10:29 pm »

28 - Death Stranding (PC 2020) - BEAT - It's not often I can track how many times I've beat a game, but currently this is the 4th time for this game and I'm still loving it.  I beat it when it first released on console, and then I doubled-dipped on the PC version.  Then when the Director's Cut came out on PS5, I beat that, and then just now, finally got around to grabbing the Director's Cut on PC, as I had some extra credit saved on Epic and with another deal for the upgrade, I practically got it free.

This game is still in my Top 20 of all times games, but is also one of the few games I can say I'd not recommend to most people.  It's one of those games where if you can't get into the gameplay loop, you will not have fun.  It's a game so focused on it's "realism", the idea of all these mechanics built into delivering items, a lot of not action going on, and I can see that as being very boring to folks, I remember a number of people originally didn't get to Episode 3, which is the ACTUAL main game, the previous area you start in being more of a warmup, but 2/3rds of the game is spent there.  It's a game where if someone says they hate it, I perfectly understand why, but for me, I just get addicted to the gameplay loop so much, I'll lose hours doing side deliveries to try and get S ranks, to build the roads, to eventually building zip line paths, all while getting into this weird ass story going on that I would have trouble explaining to people lol

There's very little I dislike about the game, anything I do have is very small and nitpicky, mostly just clunky elements to the gameplay here and there that are hopefully improved on in the sequel.

I'm even more excited for the sequel than I was before, this playthrough reminded me so much of what I love about the game and it was already one of my most anticipated games of next year alongside Monster Hunter Wilds and I really hope it can continue to be just this amazingly unique experience that no other game does.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2024!!!!!

« on: November 14, 2024, 06:02:18 pm »

Another point in P4's favor is that it's half as long as P5, but the game still felt really rough with the pacing. There are hours upon hours with nothing happening in the story and no need to engage in combat which are such a slog. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I don't believe that the Persona games are deep enough to support over 70 hours of runtime, particularly with the social aspects. On the topic of the story, I just don't find it that enjoyable.

That is what stopped me from getting further into Persona 5.  Visually, musically, lots of cool stuff going on, story was interesting, I was enjoying myself enough, but I got somewhere into the 20 to 30 hour range and I was kinda feeling the grind, seeing what I was going to be doing for the rest of the game, and then I went to see what the general base time to beat it, and it said around a 100 hours on average and that was just too much for me to see continuing on.  I'll dump dozens to hundreds of hours into a game if I'm enjoying the gameplay loop enough, but if it's not pulling me in hard enough, I just won't continue on.