What are you currently playing?

[Specter Von Baren]

I honestly think the scavenging is done pretty well, but then I like just going through all those empty houses, it creates its own little mood. And I also enjoy that dopamine hit when you find enough salvage to get that one gun upgrade, or finding enough pills so you can make better silencers or bombs. Overall it gives me a similar feeling to how Resident Evil 4 structured its upgrade progression.
In a more fantastical setting it's relatively easy to pull off, like God of War or Berserk. Heck, Ghost of Tsushima has a side character out for revenge and it feels very fitting for the character and setting. The problem with The Last of Us is that it so desperately tries to present itself - and particularly its characters - as grounded and realistic. And as a result it makes the characters appear totally irrational, especially when it's two characters (Ellie and Tommy) for whom it feels very out of character.

Instead of thinking how the characters would develop based on their history and where they reside, the writers just decided the story should be about revenge and then proceeded in forcing Ellie into the role of edgelord killer. It's funny how Ellie got the Prince of Persia treament, when the Prince went from likeable and optimistic in Sands of Time to scowling, edgey douchenozzle in Warrior Within.

At least the Prince has a pretty good reason to be edgey and unhappy since he's been constantly chased by a seemingly unstoppable monster that's trying to kill him for several years. Kind of has no choice but to be desperate when his life is in danger at almost all times. With Ellie you don't just have it going against character but also have a pile of other incentives for her to not do what she does.

 

[BrawlMan]

At least the Prince has a pretty good reason to be edgey and unhappy since he's been constantly chased by a seemingly unstoppable monster that's trying to kill him for several years. Kind of has no choice but to be desperate when his life is in danger at almost all times. With Ellie you don't just have it going against character but also have a pile of other incentives for her to not do what she does.

Plus, Warrior Within has Robin Atkin Downes in it. It's just funny hearing his Travis Touchdown voice with an accent, before he became Travis Touchdown. I still hate the game, but at least it has some entertaining moments and great combat.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Twenty runners, a bunch of clickers and a bloater for some guitar strings from the music shop?!

I dislike only being able to swap shoulders while aiming. It makes corners worse. L3 doesn't do anything important. Just lets you look at points of interest, which could have been done with Triangle when those moments occur. What they could have done is move the flashlight to L3 and then let you swap shoulders at all times with R3, fittingly the camera stick. Also wouldn't then have to leave the camera stick to press Cross to control THE CAMERA.

I can't stand the rain, and not because of sweet memories.

Any film director who would intentionally do this to their lens to make a storm feel wet would be laughed at. Really distracting and stupid. Screw artistic intent. Your artistic intention here was stupid and you should have provided an option to disable it. There's a lot of rain in this game.

The Last of Us Part II - Accessibility

www.playstation.com

The Last of Us Part II update adds Grounded difficulty, Permadeath mode, and more

Available later this week.

blog.playstation.com

If there’s anything TLoU2 didn’t skimp on, it’s accessibility options.

 

[Casual Shinji]

At least the Prince has a pretty good reason to be edgey and unhappy since he's been constantly chased by a seemingly unstoppable monster that's trying to kill him for several years. Kind of has no choice but to be desperate when his life is in danger at almost all times. With Ellie you don't just have it going against character but also have a pile of other incentives for her to not do what she does.

Maybe. I'd feel the Prince would take that sorta thing in stride though. Also, it wasn't just the Prince, that whole game smacked of edginess.

But Warrior Within does have the excuse of being released in the early 2000's, when we still thought this shit was cool - Naughty Dog really should've known better come 2016 (when TLoU2 first got announced).

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I finished the AC: Valhalla DLC that was part of the original season pass, which means the stuff in Ireland and France.
The Irish one is great! So colorful and mystical. If like me you like this sort of game purely for running around in a pretty world, virtual Ireland sure is pretty.
The France one is deliberately more dull and grimy but therefore not as fun. It is weird that this is second AC game in Paris but in a completely different time circumstances. The story for this one though is infuriatingly stupid- fortunately the actual plot is rarely what interests me in these games.

Maybe my biggest quibble with the French expansion is that it brings back the toolbox style assassination missions that I liked so well in Unity and Syndicate, where you get clues on how to infiltrate guarded areas and set yourself for a special cut scene assassination, like disguising yourself or something. Problem is that it is so hand-hold-y and blunt that it is boring. Even for me- I like easy hand-hold-y stuff! But this one is like "find a way inside the area" and there is a blue dot over an NPC that gives you a key... that's it. Ugh.

I haven't bought the latest Ragnarok one yet and will wait a bit to avoid burn-out.

So, back to Elden Ring. After starting it a couple weeks ago, I put it way for AC and now after spending hours upon hours exploring, dying, looking stuff up on the internet, running and riding away from big scary monsters and soldiers, I am all the way up to... the starting area.

 

[Ezekiel]

The Last of Us Part II - Accessibility

www.playstation.com

The Last of Us Part II update adds Grounded difficulty, Permadeath mode, and more

Available later this week.

blog.playstation.com

If there’s anything TLoU2 didn’t skimp on, it’s accessibility options.

What, does the on-screen player status effects option also turn off the rain on the imaginary lens? Is that why you posted that? I tried to check, but I just started Abbie's long part and it hasn't rained for a long time.

 

[laggyteabag]

Replaying the Mass Effect games again (for the second time this year!)

Despite the theme of galactic genocide, this is such a comfortable game for me. I just find the world and characters so relaxing to be around.

Playing ME1, and the biggest triumph of the Legendary Edition is that the gameplay changes to ME1 make it actually playable to me. In the past, I've had trouble revisiting this game after playing 2 and 3, but Im more than happy to play it now, which is just fantastic. No more downloading other people's saves anymore!

This time around, I've downloaded a few quality of life and visual mods. The standout ones for me are:

• Unlimited sprint/Mako boost
• Skip all of the minigames
• One that imports a lot of weapon models from Mass Effect 3 (In ME1, each weapon class only has two models, and all of the weapon variants are just recolours of those two models. This adds some much needed variety.)
• One that makes Saren change his appearance throughout the game, to match his descent into Reaper indoctrination. Always looked weird having him covered in tubes with a robot arm when he was pretending to be normal.

The Mako still really sucks, though.

 

[Ezekiel]

The production values are nice. But that's a double-edged sword that stifles creativity. When you have over 2,000 people (I didn't make that number up.) working on a game, it's much harder for any one of them to make a suggestion. If I had worked there at the time and it was a smaller project with fewer people, maybe someone would have listened to me or read my note in the suggestion box when I said that shoulder swapping would have made more sense on R3, allowed at all times, not just while aiming.

Would be good if some of the upgrades weren't under abilities that you don't really want and have little if anything to do with the other. I hardly ever use the Listening mode, but I have to enhance it if I want certain other upgrades. Those later upgrades already cost more, so why put that extra cost there for something the player doesn't want? I hardly upgrade anything, because it's generally so expensive for so little. Wasted 80 on that rifle scope I hardly get to use.

Encounters are okay. Aiming is weird. Partly because the game assists. Wish the stealth was better. Wish that merely aiming at an unsuspecting enemy with your gun didn't give them this sixth sense. Well, not quite sixth sense, but it makes them extremely attuned to the outermost regions of their far peripheral vision.

Wish the player characters didn't turn their captives around after pressing Triangle on them from the front. Ellie could simply slice at their throat instead of grabbing them, since she has easier access from the front. Not sure about Abbie. Maybe she'd throw herself on top of them and then choke them with both hands while pinning their arms with her legs. But getting to do a rearward hold when you didn't position yourself for one feels cheap.

Wish you could aim your gun from low cover without lifting your head. In Uncharted 1, you could actually pop out to the side from low cover, rather than always popping up. Uncharted 2 removed that, and I don't think Naughty Dog ever really improved their cover mechanics, whether it's sticky cover like Uncharted or free cover like The Last of Us. Well, it's nice that you can crouch and lie down. That's an improvement over Uncharted. But your movement options are still so limited that it's hard to aim at any enemy without getting shot at.

 

[Ezekiel]

What, does the on-screen player status effects option also turn off the rain on the imaginary lens? Is that why you posted that? I tried to check, but I just started Abbie's long part and it hasn't rained for a long time.

It does!

 

[BrawlMan]

Decided to play Ninja Gaiden Master Collection. I'll explain more in the other thread.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

What, does the on-screen player status effects option also turn off the rain on the imaginary lens? Is that why you posted that? I tried to check, but I just started Abbie's long part and it hasn't rained for a long time.

Idk I haven’t played the game in so long, but there was an update that changes render modes so that might help. It also has full control remapping so something like R3 shoulder swap should be possible. Really though, check out the options menu for accessibility. You could spend hours tweaking different shit if you really wanted to.

 

[Ezekiel]

Idk I haven’t played the game in so long, but there was an update that changes render modes so that might help. It also has full control remapping so something like R3 shoulder swap should be possible. Really though, check out the options menu for accessibility. You could spend hours tweaking different shit if you really wanted to.

Already tried R3 as shoulder swap, but it's not much use when I can't use it outside of aiming, so I just set it back.

Anyway, thanks for helping clean up the artificial lens. Doesn't remove all lens effects. There's still that other kind of moisture in clear-skied forests, for example.

 

[Dalisclock]

Since ER is a LONG, LONG fucking game, I've breaking it up by occasionally playing other games on the side. Started replaying Ace Combat 6 and it holds up very well upon replay. Since I already beat it, I'm playing the NG+ equivalent which is kinda fun since you can start the game flying one of the endgame planes with all the Special weapons unlocked and the early game missions just can't handle that at all. It's hilarious to pick a SU-47 Berkut(an endgame tier plane) for the first mission and immediately notice how much bigger it is then almost all the other planes scrambling with you from your home base. It's even more amusing also get to the part of the first mission where you're supposed to retreat because your air force is outmatched by an elite squadron and the resident enemy giant flying superweapon and realize "Wait, I've still got 100 missiles left! I can end this war here" and try to shoot down everything I can until the in-mission timer forces me to leave or fail.

I also realized that the game flows much more smoothly if you just skip all the cutscenes between missions because god are they fucking awful. It's like there were two sets of writers, one for the cutscenes and one for the missions and clearly all the competent writers were put on the missions. Plus I don't have to hear the WORST FUCKING CATCHPHRASE IN A VIDEO GAME(or at least not very much of it) which is another plus.

I am kinda sad the Operation system didn't come back for 7. It's kinda cool to help relieve friendly forces on the battlefield which then allows them to be freed up and help you retake other parts of the battlefield and since you only need to complete some of the available operations, not all of them, it gives the illusion the forces that are freed up can put increased pressure on the remaining enemies and essentially creates a positive feedback loop where the game basically says "Okay, you've pretty much made the enemies position untenable and thus they're defeated." Also the fact once you've freed up enough friendly forces by pacifying their parts of the battlefield you can order a full scale attack on a group of enemies, which manifests on a metric fuck ton of incoming missiles and artillery fire on those same enemies, like the heavens raining pure death upon them.....and it's so cathartic. May the Golden King Smile upon us indeed.

Also, the plot superficially reminds me of a certain current event going on right now so there's that.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Got my first successful run in Vampire Survivors today, after accidentally hitting the evolve conditions for four of the six weapons I picked up.

I still like the Whip for reliable early AoE damage, but I was getting more out of my other weapons once they were built up, according to the stats. I'll have to see if I can make any more of them work for me.

Also I think the Library's easier than the Forest, simply because there's fewer directions that the enemies can come from in the former. Especially with Antonio's Whip striking in those two directions.

 

[Hawki]

So got into the Overwatch 2 beta. Honestly, there's not too much to say, as a lot of it is already OW1 being present, with OW2 elements added on. That said, got some random thoughts to share, so:

-I've only played one Push map so far, but damn was it a lot of fun. More! More!

-I'm on the fence with the no. of players per team going down from 6 to 5. I don't think it's really changed that much, though it may just be me, but matches seem to have become faster, maybe as a result. That said, I can sort of see the point for it, with there now being one tank per team. There's less of the issue of overlapping shields and bullet sponges.

-Sojourn is...I'm mixed. I've played her a few times, and all I can say is that when the devs said she had a high skill ceiling, they were right. On the surface, she's pretty simple (ranged damage dealer armed with an automatic weapon), but there's still strategy involved with when to use the secondary fire, and how agile you have to be with her slide. She kind of comes off as a more advanced Soldier: 76.

-The sound design and art style seem to have more grit to them. Some of the weapons sound like they have more punch, like there's less of a cartoony atmosphere, and more of a sense of weight. Similarly, the art style, while still cartoony, has more of an edge to it. Harder lines and all that. Really on the fence about that. You can argue it makes sense, given the direction of the narrative, but still...

Anyway, random thoughts.

 

[BrawlMan]

I started with NGΣ2 to see how different this originally PS3 port was different from the 360 counterpart. I do know the game while challenging, is much easier than and fair compared to NGII. They don't load the game with so many enemies, that each encounter turns in to an unfair LDK mode with obnoxious enemies up the wazoo. Σ2 dials it back to NG's fight up to 5-7 enemies and smaller encounters. It does make the levels feel barren at times, but I don't see it as that bad of a trade off. The upgrade system has been changed at designated points of the shop, instead allowing you to buy upgrades in the original version. I get why, but players should still be given the option to use their essence points however they want. Now essence are used to stock up on healing items, and they can make boss fights way less difficult, if not going for a self-imposed challenge. I've only completed the first chapter so far though.

I actually prefer Σ2 over II (controversial, I know and do not care), because it's more polished and less bullshit in difficulty. There are stuff I miss from the original such as the gore, but you get used to the censorship. It's weird, because the Vita port allowed the player to turn the gore back on. Why couldn't Team Ninja just do that again? It shows the port was rushed in this regard, The combat works and I am already getting used to it again. I just have to remember not to play the game like DMC, and more like Ninja Gaiden. It's so satisfying doing the Izuna Drop on mofos! The modern ports of Σ2 actually have the tag team missions unlocked from the start. So you could get some practice in on techniques. They took out the online co-op, so you will have to deal with an AI. The AI is competent and knows how to take care of itself.

 

[Ezekiel]

Finished it today. God that was grim. Really don't understand the draw to that kind of storytelling. If the characters' actions made sense it would at least be more excusable.

Spoiler

Ellie murders about 150 people to spare one. Joel would be so proud.

Abbie is a crappy character design. Just made her arms as big as possible and called it a day. Looked through my photo collection for muscular women and found bodybuilder Lisa Lyon. Much better balance there. Doesn't look like they simply attached a man's arms and shoulders to a woman's body.

Spoiler

Those 21 floors you descend without an elevator in the spore-infested building were one of my favorite settings in the series.

 

[bluegate]

Abbie is a crappy character design. Just made her arms as big as possible and called it a day. Looked through my photo collection for muscular women and found bodybuilder Lisa Lyon. Much better balance there. Doesn't look like they simply attached a man's arms and shoulders to a woman's body.

I'm sure that the body model they used would be flattered by your description of her.

Spoiler

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/77/ca/fe/77cafeefbd4d0ca8d52288707da9fa29.jpg

https://i.redd.it/rv0wm09nno751.jpg

Also, what kind of person has a photo collection of women on their computer? I could see a child hitting puberty starting something weird like that, or a photographer, but...

 

[Ezekiel]

I'm sure that the body model they used would be flattered by your description of her.

Spoiler

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/77/ca/fe/77cafeefbd4d0ca8d52288707da9fa29.jpg

https://i.redd.it/rv0wm09nno751.jpg

Who look like shit, after no doubt doing far more bodybuilding than Abbie would have time for. Abbie probably also eats an inordinate amount of WLF's food.

 

[Chimpzy]

Fuck me, someone mentioned Abby. Guess we know what the next 20 pages will be about.