2024 VIDEO GAMES CATCH ALL THREAD

[Contentious C]

18 hours ago, Craig H said:

I have only read about it. Lots of people saying it’s a Soulsborn quality of boss and that it took them at least an hour to finally beat it and it took re-spec’ing to do it.

My body is ready.

 

1 hour ago, Craig H said:

Oh my fucking goodness. 5 of us played the Act 1 boss in PoE 2 last night. We started at 9:30. At 10:30 we gave up because me and a couple others had to go to bed. 

Holy shit. I've never played a boss that hard in an ARPG before. His phase 2 is the shit of nightmares. This is the best game ever.

Time to re-gear and re-spec. Two of us were putting poison DOTs on him and it felt like it didn't matter. My grenades also cause ignite and even that DOT didn't matter. We could barely put a dent in him in phase 2. 

Yeah, making the right choice to stay the fuck away.

The difficulty spike in the first game was so aggravating that it made me quit for good; the only build I could reliably get anywhere with was the boring-ass Zombie Army witch, but even then, when I got to the Final, Last, Final Map boss, I still got fucking melted, and the screen was so dark and poorly-resolved that it wasn't like I could tell what was killing anything to know what to avoid or how to adjust.  Life's stressful enough in ways that come out of nowhere; I don't need that shit.

[Kevin Wilson]

Its interesting to see what people find fun and what isn't fun, we saw that a lot in the FromSoft threads. I kinda side with Contentious C in this case, if it takes me an hour and I have to totally re-spec and re-gear to beat a boss I am not even damaging that isn't terribly entertaining for me. But I'm also the oddball that doesn't want any help on specing. I don't want to look up guides or constantly change it, I want some balance of what I find fun but also effective enough to get through the game. Not that I mind dying, I die all the time in games, but it has to be a fun challenge. I'm just concerned PoE 2 isn't geared towards my style of gaming if the difficulty ramps up that quick and is more geared towards people that already put hundreds of hours into PoE and wanted the next challenge. Which is perfectly fine of course, if a million people are having a blast then don't change the game on my account, it may just be a little too hardcore for my gaming preferences.

But its also in Early Access, things can be tweaked in the next six months so I'll still keep my eye on it.

[Contentious C]

The only raids I ever played were the relatively primitive ones in Marvel Heroes, so I don't know how representative they are, but they both had time limits of 30 minutes, so they were more or less known DPS checks.

What's being described sounds, well, punitive, but there isn't much context. Does make me wonder how much leveling they may be expecting folks to do.

[odessasteps]

7 hours ago, Raziel said:

The Giant definitely looks like Tony Todd.  

I dug that the tutorial was the opening of Raiders, and that the game takes place between Raiders and Last Crusade, and the actual "Indy" game play (going through ruins, puzzles) is great, but...

Yeah, the rest of the game is a Bethesda Game with an Indiana Jones skin.  The presentation is REAL good.  But also REALLY dark, like brighness dark, and I turned up the brightness and still have issues seeing on a 4K Laptop monitor.  And whilst I'm not opposed to running around beating up facists, there's way too much "stealth sections".

I can’t i shine how dark it is and not playing on the “enemies are red” and key things are blue mode. 
 

I got as far as the hidden section in the Vatican today and was def wanting it to be brighter. 

[Raziel]

Since I finally got a Gaming Laptop, I finally used this Baldur's Gate III key I had lying around, and installed it.

 

I think I'm in love.

[Craig H]

Last night we spent another hour trying to beat the Act 1 boss in PoE 2. This time twice he got him to half of his life in phase 2. Our thinking is that we're just too underleveled and underpowered to beat him. Two of us beat him already on the other characters and they said it took them maybe an hour. The problem we're running into is we creep block each other and get hit with his ice beams or we just play stupid. The biggest problem is we're just not damaging him enough. And since boss health scales based on how many people are in your party, we need to go and do some other shit first, which is what I said we should do two days ago. I think the two of us that beat him though thought it would be the same process that it was for the 2 of them and with 4 or 5 of us it's a different ballgame. Plus, I know for sure my build is kind of shitty against bosses and my other friend that is playing a witch also has a really random build.

It's a learning curve more than anything. Like, my skill tree is dog shit because I'm just really unfamiliar with the skill tree and I used gems that were rare on items I shouldn't have used them on, which just wasted them. I don't think re-gearing and re-spec'ing is a bad thing in this case because clearly 2 to 3 of us have bad builds. Against bosses anyway.

[jaedmc]

Today I played a new indie game called Bat to the Heavens. Your character can only jump by hitting objects, so the game is just a bunch of mechanics puzzles.. The game doesn't really tell you how to play, you learn by doing. The downside is that getting the movement right feels so freaking difficult that I was just dying for someone to just tell me what to do.

Thankfully the art and music is super chill so I didn't throw my controller through a wall.

[DragonZombie]

The games in Mega Man X Collection for the PS2 are ports of the games, and not emulations. X3 is the PS1 game ported instead, the one with the anime cutscences and anime Mavericks cutscences and RedBook audio for music and reworked sound effects.

There are several changes to the games, some are sounds and text changes and reduction of lag.

The option to save for all games was added for X1 to X3. X4 to X6 already had the save feature when those games were on the PS1, the PS2 way replaces the old ways to save for those games.

X5 to X6 have difficulty settings and auto charge and rapid fire like they did for PS1. The vibration options for both, however, were removed. The Japanese voice acting for the cut scenes of X6 was also removed, leaving only the sound effects and music in the cutscences.

[Cliff Hanger]

I am finally, after nearly 20 years, playing Dead Rising. Not DRDR, the PS4 port of the original.

 

What an odd game.

[odessasteps]

On 12/9/2024 at 8:38 AM, Raziel said:

The Giant definitely looks like Tony Todd.

He did the voice for the Giant. 

Also, Enrico Colantoni does the voice of Father Antonio.

[Death From Above]

Ananta

https://youtu.be/n26InrperQE?si=5o3_qIn2qRZvA0Cq

Apparently this is going to have heavy gatcha elements so uhhhhhhh

Gotta admit it looks gorgeous though

[odessasteps]

Starting the game awards with Witcher 4 and new elder ring is a strong play.

Also, statler and Waldorf for the win. 

[DragonZombie]

The 1989 NES Tetris and 1998 Game Boy Color game Tetris DX were added to the Switch Online subscription service.

There was a 1988 Tetris game from Bullet-Proof Software released for the Famicom, and the Tengen 1989 game, which are both different games.

The Bullet-Proof Software game for Japan has 3 revisions. The Tengen game has prototypes A to D, and the Tengen game was based on the Vs.System game. Which was based on the Arcade game. 

The European verison of the Nintendo made NES game had extra cheats.

The 3-in-1 Super Mario Bros. / Tetris / Nintendo World Cup version changes the HOWARD to "------" in the Top score screen.

[odessasteps]

Happy Balatro won something. 

Also, a new Turok game. 

Edited December 13, 2024 by odessasteps

[Craig H]

I know everyone is jizzing in their pants over the Elden Ring and Witcher stuff (and both are pretty cool), but that Helldivers 2 update trailer blew my fucking mind. Just when Path of Exile 2 pulled me away from Helldiving, the Illuminate and finally, a fucking warthog-like vehicle bring me back. And it's available now which was really unexpected. Time to get back to handing out cups of Libertea.

[SirSmUgly]

Astro Bot is also my GotY. Astro and Balatro winning so much this year pretty much fit with my perspective on games in 2024.

[The Man Known as Dan]

Marvel Rivals is such an annoying game for me because it’s the type of game I have zero interest in but some of the character designs just feel so absurdly good that I want to try it anyway. That game is one Kitty Pryde away from getting me hook like and sinker, and I’m already on the border just from Magik and Psylocke (whose design is legit an all timer for me)

[NikoBaltimore]

7 hours ago, SirSmUgly said:

Astro Bot is also my GotY. Astro and Balatro winning so much this year pretty much fit with my perspective on games in 2024.

It's still hard for me to wrap my head around a poker game being GOTY contender but while I'm not addicted to it I can definitely see why it's getting all the love.

Now the question I have is if one game is worth getting a PS5.  I would like to know of a few games I want to play on a system but if this one game is all I need then I might need to make some room for it.

[Craig H]

2 hours ago, The Man Known as Dan said:

Marvel Rivals is such an annoying game for me because it’s the type of game I have zero interest in but some of the character designs just feel so absurdly good that I want to try it anyway. That game is one Kitty Pryde away from getting me hook like and sinker, and I’m already on the border just from Magik and Psylocke (whose design is legit an all timer for me)

I was sort of in the same boat where I had moved on from games like Overwatch and if I play an FPS now I want it to be something really engaging with a solid single player and if it's multiplayer then something like Valorant. I would throw Battlefield 4 in there, but I don't think anything like BF 4 will ever be made again, which sucks.

I downloaded Rivals since it was free and played it for an hour. It's...pretty good? I played as Magneto for whatever reason and my K/D/A was absurdly positive. It was fun using his abilities and stuff, but it also felt like the level of skill in that game is low. At least for my hour with it. Like, I shouldn't be able to jump into my first game and have 15 kills and 4 deaths. So that could be a downside where it's a mobile game dressed up as a PC game. 

The big positives are that the gameplay is super solid. Just really tight and fun. The character designs make me think of MvC. They're just awesome. And the time to kill is fairly long. It's not as hardcore as something like Space Marine 2 where your time to kill is insanely short. You're either dying or killing something within 30 to 40 seconds so you're never on very solid footing. With Rivals, as long as you're not blind, you're going to live for a decent amount of time.

What I want more than anything else is to take these models in Rivals and use that for a new Ultimate Alliance game. It's so weird that with ARPGs having such a moment with D4, Lost Ark, Last Epoch, Path of Exile 1, and now Path of Exile 2 that Marvel has no ARPG. The time now makes more sense than ever to have the ARPG based on Ultimate Alliance that they killed (I can't remember the name of it). Make something like that again and use these models from Rivals.

[SirSmUgly]

8 hours ago, NikoBaltimore said:

It's still hard for me to wrap my head around a poker game being GOTY contender but while I'm not addicted to it I can definitely see why it's getting all the love.

Now the question I have is if one game is worth getting a PS5.  I would like to know of a few games I want to play on a system but if this one game is all I need then I might need to make some room for it.

I started playing video games in the mid-late '80s, so for me, a highly-polished, high-budget mascot platformer good enough to be in the G.O.A.T. platformer conversation is enough. I 100%'d the game twice in a row and cleared the speed run DLC. I will fire up the holiday level when I have access to my PS5 again.

If that doesn't even remotely describe you, then no, this game is not worth getting a PS5 for, IMO.

[NikoBaltimore]

That definitely sounds like me. I am already looking at the space to put it though will wait untill after Christmas to get one.

[A.M.B.]

Can't say I've played many new games this year but UFO 50 is hands down my GOTY. The best thing for me is that it makes the NES era feel accessible and worth the time investment in any game. I grew up on SNES as a kid and the NES era was just a little too rough around the edges for me to ever go back and play, when Mario, FF, Zelda, Metroid, etc all had objectively better games on the SNES. But nothing feels lacking in UFO 50 so far. Picking up a seemingly simple, random title and dicking around until all the sudden I'm hooked on a game way deeper than I expected is something no other game has ever offered me on this scale. And the beautiful thing is everyone has a drastically different top 5 depending on their tastes.

[odessasteps]

Finally got this achievement in great circle 

Spoiler

Knocking out a guard with a fly swatter 

 

[odessasteps]

Made it to the next set piece in Great Circle. Not coming close to 100% at the moment, but been told you can go back after the main story to find what you missed. 

[Cliff Hanger]

The Xmas stage of Astro Bot is pretty neat, the enemies are super low-challenge and it's more about solving a puzzle to unlock a traversal item and then using the traversal item to get a couple of presents (7 cameo bots, and some costumes and Speeder paint.) Most of the bots are from PS1 platformwrs with decent cult followings (I still have 1 to find but at least 5 fall into this category and 1 doesn't.)