SleepingSilence

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

I’ve likely spent way too much of my free time playing on my PS5. (Partly to justify buying the console in the first place.) So here’s a laundry list of my thoughts about most of the games that I’ve played.

Completed games

Dark Souls 2: This was an entirely miserable gameplay experience. But it’s not actually all that challenging, due to its completely broken healing system that allows you to purchase 99 life gems at all times. And I could not give you a single positive in its favor. Nor a solitary reason why I played it until I reached its end credits. (Besides the fact that I was playing it with someone else.)

Bloodborne: This game is heavily carried by its beautifully bleak art design, and the usually satisfying combat. But so many of the bosses in this game are far too easy and unsatisfying to defeat. (Especially compared to what you have to do to get to them.) The chalice dungeons absolutely suck. And the end game areas feel like a chore to get through. (I think Elden Ring does almost everything better. Even if I’ve played that game thrice as long, and still haven’t finished it yet.)

Dead Cells: This game makes me wish that other games had the same smooth and responsive combat that it has. “Hard but fair” might even describe this game better than most of the souls-likes. (And the updates only made this game better.) So…it makes me wonder if I’ll ever truly “get into” a roguelike, when my reward for beating the game is doing it all over again…

Titanfall 2 (Campaign): One of the best FPS campaigns that I’ve played. (Short of a list as that might be.) My only critique is that it’s a bit short, and its “plot” leaves room for a sequel that we’ll probably never see. (Its time travel gimmick was also something I’d have loved to see a whole game of.)

Monster Boy and The Cursed Kingdom: A surprisingly challenging experience that kept trying to “one-up” its difficulty (in the latter half) to the point of me being happy that it was finally over. But it still deserves an overall positive rating.

A Hat In Time: Collect-a-thons have never been a genre pick of mine. But I had a decent time throughout. The game had plenty of ideas to keep things from getting repetitive. (Though some levels were much less fun to play than others.) But the default camera was pretty bad in this one. (And even the zoomed-out one had its problems.)

Dust An Elysian Tail: It was a decent experience. Despite having an easily exploitable combat system, and a story that wasn’t particularly engaging. This felt nice to complete after it kept crashing on my PS4. (Though the f*cker still hard crashed on me after a near end game cutscene, and nearly soft-locked me when it respawned me inside of the floor.)

Carto: The 2nd half of this puzzle game was more challenging. (Usually through more obtuse trial and error.) But it also drags on for far too long, and there’s way too much uninteresting dialogue to sit through. This one wasn’t worth getting through.

Journey: I usually like walking simulators. (Like the next two games that were probably inspired by this.) But this one felt a bit dull and unsatisfying to play by the end credits. And the gimmick of ‘anonymous co-op’ felt fake to me. The music was nice though, I guess.

Spirit Of The North: I enjoyed my time with this one. Despite its clunky platforming controls and minimal puzzle gameplay. (With the added cute bonus of my cat watching the little barking fox that I was playing on screen.)

Omno: This one had a lot of charm. (With a lot of creatures roaming about through its stages and little cutscenes where you ride large ones to the next stage.) Though its conclusion feels half-baked and doesn’t have the same impact. (Since it feels like whatever the hell I was doing didn’t matter in the end.)

Games I tried

Journey To The Savage Planet: This ‘metroidvania’ platformer with oddball humor *almost* worked for me. (Even if half of the jokes are basically “boomers amirite”.) Though I only got about halfway through it, before the poor combat and awful fetch quests annoyed me too much.

Dodgeball Academa: A mix of modern cartoon antics and Pokemon sport battles that got way too repetitive for me to complete. And the “always trying to be funny” dialogue in this is pretty bad too. Stopped halfway through.

Ghostrunner: I want to like this game. It’s certainly not a bad one. But the default controls could not feel any less intuitive if it tried. And switching them only made me play long enough to wish that I had this on PC instead. (And I feel like the game isn’t quite tight and responsive enough to be so punishing.) Made the mistake of changing options in the middle of level 3, and it made me start all over again.

Momodora Reverie Under The Moonlight: I gave this one a longer try, and I still didn’t like much about it. The difficulty is all over the place, and the game not saving huge portions of map exploration on death was a huge pain in the ass.

Rogue Legacy 2: One of those games that I’m glad I played “for free”, instead of paying full price for it. The amount of contact damage you get from off-screen enemies is beyond cheap. But I didn’t want to simply “turn it off” in the house rules that it has. (Since it self claimed that it was a significant portion of its challenge. Or something to that effect.) Plus it felt worse to play than Dead Cells in basically every way.

COD Cold War (Multiplayer Zombies Mode only): The amount of grinding expected from you to unlock some of the basic functions of your game is a little outrageous. And I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a game with such a broken multiplayer/party function in recent memory. Closed parties don’t work properly, and the game will constantly reset your options on you. (For instance, I would limit my players to me and friend (2), and it would keep resetting it to four players no matter what I did.) And until I realized that I needed to use “private matches” specifically, it partied our newbie rank accounts with impossibly high level accounts that absolutely skewed and broke the game balance for us. So while it was fun to kill a health sponge boss with a friend, it’s vastly inferior to games like Warframe or Destiny 2.

Ghost Of Tsushima: The game is very pretty and all. But this is literally every single Ubisoft game that has ever existed. With a slightly more in-depth and challenging combat system, that I suppose *is* an improvement. Though I did not see the appeal to play this for fifty hours.

Immortal Fenyx Rising: The fact that this is lauded and compared positively to Breath Of The Wild is fucking hilarious to me. (And that’s coming from someone who feels no fondness for that game.) This game controls like dogs*t. The cutscenes and voice acting are laughably bad. And I was genuinely questioning my sanity when it introduced and encouraged me to find “points of interests” on a perch, and it had like a hundred fucking tiny objects for me to play “hot and cold” with. Probably one of the worst starts to a game that I’ve played this year.

Forager: Certainly addictive for a short period of time. But this is basically a mobile idle-clicker game, without any microtransactions.

Children Of Morta: Expected Diablo-like combat, and got an incredibly clunky roguelite instead.

Bloodstained Ritual Of The Night: Was getting “Ender Lilies” vibes from the bullshit encounter with the first boss, and I just decided to play something else.

Currently playing

Demon Souls (Remastered): Only a dozen or so plus hours into this, and I’m feeling the brick wall potential that “world tendency” is providing. The game is more enjoyable to play than Dark Souls 2. (Least as the OP-feeling mage class.) But it has a lot of the same flaws too. Though I haven’t given up yet, and I’m now in the “Guess I’ll grind” stage. (Though a lot of other games have been played instead. Even more than this list portrays.)

Kena Bridge Of Spirits: The cutscenes and dialogue in this would make it seem like this game is for babies. But the bosses (and basic enemies) will kill you in a few (usually two to four) hits. So I don’t know if pushing myself through this game, just to listen to more of these Minion-level cutscenes, would be worth the time investment.

The Forgotten City (Switch to my PS5): I was enjoying the intrigue that the narrative provided. But the load times for my PC were genuinely terrible. (Probably my own bad.) But it’s free on Extra, so I could always find out and redo my adventure from here.

And I still have all the games on Steam that I have yet to play any of. Too many games, too little time.

I really should get back to writing something too. And the fact that I want to do it again, proves I've taken far too long of a break...

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So how's everyone else's procrastination from writing going?

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

Played some Ship of Fools Co-Op, and that was a pretty good time.

Remnant: From The Ashes crashed and burned in its final third. So I'll give it 6.5. Obviously rushed in development, with the easiest levels and bosses appearing toward the game's conclusion. (Failing scaling to a degree that I'm not sure I've seen before.) But it also had several impossible/time-wasting puzzles, and one of the most tedious final boss fights that I've ever dealt with. It actually cramped my hand when I finally defeated the static health sponge.

I like the art style, and the morbid sense of humor. But Wytchwood is an absolute chore to play. Nothing but twelve long fetch quests that you do in batches of four at a time.

Shadow Of The Colossus’ camera and controls were beyond clunky. So it shocks me to hear that the remaster had supposedly ‘updated’ them. I refused to replay a boss fight due to me fighting the game itself, more than the actual colossi.

Went to my friend’s new house to play a bit of Cyberpunk 2077. Wasn’t something that I cared for. It’s quite linear-feeling and convoluted from the very outset. (And I supposedly picked the best introduction too.)

Now playing Vampyr for reasons. And it’s an interesting concept, with some incredibly obnoxious combat. But I’m sticking with it for the time being.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

Spiderman Miles Morales really made me feel like I was Electro. (The combat and exploration in this was a drastic downgrade.)

Scarlet Nexus’ plot and characters were incredibly stock, and the combat didn’t appeal to me. So I didn't get very far into it.

Control was absolute mediocrity squared. Boring characters. Awful quests. Unbalanced combat. A lousy map. Visual bugs. Got halfway through it, and I honestly couldn't be bothered to do another "timed quest". Not a moment of this was entertaining. (But if you like reading through/watching long video collectables, instead of playing an actual game. Have I got a recommendation for you...)

Prey has some clever worldbuilding, and moments where the immersive sim elements work to enhance the experience. But that's about all in terms of pure positives. The combat is repetitive. The (three) enemy types are braindead, and their attacks are unfair to compensate. The traversal gun is frustratingly inconsistent. And the "it was all a simulation" ending, is what you write when you're out of ideas.

Remnant: From The Ashes is a rollercoaster of quality, thus far. It has some pretty decent combat, and some above average AI (for the gunner enemies). But it also has plenty of bugs (both visual ones and things that get you killed), and other bullshit that makes it obvious that it was not designed for solo-play. But it might be the best game I’ve tried to play, from my Elden Ring break.

Free Steam game you'll never play (Until Jun 1.): store.steampowered.com/app/489630/War…

What shows/movies are you watching?

'Race To Survive: Alaska' may be the single most embarrassing reality competition show that I've EVER seen, and it's become my "so bad it's good" show to watch when I'm bored.

It would be like watching the Amazing Race, if almost every single team were comprised of children, decided to as little as possible to win, and still managed to completely fuck up every episode.

Made all the better, with the voiceover doing his best to make the challenge more thrilling than it really is. Yet the editing of the show almost always undermines what he describes.

>Voiceover: "In the scorching, burning, blazing heat of the sun, our contestants have the heat turned all the way up in this race."
>Shows a perfectly pleasant looking sunny day, and displays "70° F"

And this episode has someone fucking suffering A HEAT STROKE after walking a few hours in perfect weather, and she has to be carried away by a helicopter.

The next elimination is someone trips over a twig, and then quits because it made their foot sore.

It's so f*cking bad...

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

"HEY I WONDER IF YOU CAN FREEZE THE WATER AND MAKE IT GO SOMEWHERE ELSE".

@Fabricant451

It's great that you use this as the example. Because that phrase being said over and over again, is the part that I was watching someone else play.

I also find "games that put you in small wave-style combat arenas ad-nauseum" is my least favorite combat scenario to deal with. Because it's probably only done that way, to make up for the enemy AI's shortcomings.

I'm Team Bloodborne all the way still. Elden Ring has the most boss fatigue out of any of the games in its ilk, because of how many bosses are not unique or well designed.

@Fabricant451

I certainly do have my critiques of Elden Ring. (Like how the platforming is pretty terrible. And how jumping somewhere I shouldn't, is usually the reason I die. Or how finicky the camera/lock-on system can be at times. Or how the balancing is unsurprisingly all over the place. Or how much this game could use an NPC quest journal.)

But I'm 90 hours in Elden Ring (some of that being afk), and I keep finding new locations, enemies, NPCs with bits of lore, set pieces/cutscenes, equipment, and new boss variations. That it honestly puts most open world games that I've played to shame.

And yeah, it sort of does feel like this game will literally never end. But I guess I haven't gotten to a point where it's soured my overall experience. Because it's genuinely engrossing. (At least, for me.)

Though I plan to revisit both Bloodborne and Dark Souls at some point.

Jedi Survivor was good.

@Fabricant451

Insert "You actually got this game to work?" joke here.

Did you play Fallen Order? And is the sequel better? (I've heard that it's basically Fallen Order 2.0, in that the Pros and Cons are basically identical.)

And my experience with Fallen Order was a brief one. But it made me question the "PS5 load times are fast now", when I was waiting minutes on end for every loading screen to go away.

Anyway, I'm only a couple hours into Tears of the Kingdom, but I think the starting tutorial island is less good than the BOTW one because of how more blatantly linear it is.

@Fabricant451

I wonder sometimes if I didn't give Breath Of The Wild a fair chance. But this game really feels quite empty in its early areas. And I miss the original dungeons that make the Zelda games special.

And honestly, BOTW's start could've probably used a bit more linearity/direction. (Though I say this, knowing full well, that 'Nintendo direction' probably means "handholding, JRPG-level tutorializing".

Also, 'weapons breaking every few seconds' is a cancerous game mechanic.

Play or Manage?

@Dark Cloud Pft. Like I said, 20 to 1. You simply put yours on a long, long hiatus. :P

Play or Manage?

Well I've had far longer (and actual completed) RP's when I've GM'd them. So there's that.

The times the GM was the primary reason it stopped altogether (versus other players/outside drama) especially on this site is probably a 20 to 1 ratio.

Usually the first time after one of the other players fail to follow a rule, or show that they failed to read information in a prior post. And the GM will become hyper-fixated on it, and end up spiraling down after. Versus punishing the culprit in-game/IC and moving right along.(Mistakes happen. Don't let it spoil the whole RP.)

That, or the GM is ironically the very first to drop their own creation. (Effectively wasting the other players time.)

But both can be equally entertaining (or miserable) depending on the group/individuals you've decided to roleplay with.

What shows/movies are you watching?

The D&D movie was fine. Had a decent atmosphere. It wasn't boring. (Had plenty of action set pieces.) And it wasn't the insufferable modern Marvel-esque comedy that I expected it to be. (Hell, some of the banter was actually amusing, and felt like it belonged in a D&D campaign.)

But it was very predictable, and it had a few too many Hollywood tropes in its script. (Including a few plot gaps, that a 2nd draft could've probably fixed.) With cartoon villains that aren't intimidating in the least. Though it's the kind of accessible (in that it lacks any clever/memorable writing) that general audiences will still give glowing praise to.

6/10? (Will forget almost everything in a week or so.)

And if you happen to be a big D&D nerd (or have played it at least once in your life). You'll probably notice that it broke the rules several times. (Like how 'Sending Stones' don't work that way. Etc. etc. This was not written by nerds.)

Anime & Manga! Oh my! (Anime/Manga Thread)

There's a surprising amount of "watchable/passable" shows this season.

And every show isn't going on hiatus, like Winter.

But there's not exactly anything that's "go out of your way to watch this" worthy. So it's still probably best to clear out your "to-watch list" first.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

For someone with limited Dark Souls experience, Elden Ring is great thus far.

Combat's far more fluid and manageable than it is in Dark Souls. And it's far more open-ended and visually stunning than Bloodborne. Both games that I still had positive (albeit brief) experiences with. Yet this is the one that I'll probably stick with...

But I haven't gotten far enough to experience its "boss and length" fatigue, that most Triple A games seem to be guilty of nowadays.

Then again, after watching someone playing Ragnorok and listening to the obnoxious son blab on and tell you every puzzle solution in ten seconds flat, I've found no such annoyance in Elden Ring.

The horse/mounted combat kind of sucking aside.

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I played Greedfall first. But its lack of direction wasn't doing it any favors. Regardless of if it was setting up an interesting narrative (or not).

The map is so needlessly confusing, that it's difficult to navigate through the floors of most buildings. And the open world areas are usually small, and don't have much to reward your curiosity. (Probably due to its smaller budget.)

But the sheer amount of "two characters dryly exposit dialogue" cutscenes that played in the beginning, was a good reminder why I (usually) prefer playing indies over 'the games that so desperately want to be movies'.