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2020 VIDEO GAME CATCH-ALL THREAD


SirSmUgly

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DAMN. Insert that clip from Kill Bill when he talks about being at his most masochistic...

So I never really thought I would care much about 60 FPS vs 30, finding the latter to be perfectly fine in so many games, but after playing Miles Morales on the Performance/Ray Tracing option? Shit, I might be a convert... Now I'm looking forward to trying this option in older games like Horizon and Tsushima, both of which I conveniently still have to start or finish NG+ and DLC.

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1 hour ago, Zimbra said:

They're also removing the game from the Playstation Store, which seems like a BFD

Here's part of a thread with some good info on what's going on (other than a lot of snickering and laughing because holy shit has CDPR shot itself in the foot multiple times in the last 72 hours)

 

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That and the whole telling people to ask Sony for a refund without talking to Sony first probably made the situation untenable.

Something like this was going to happen to AAA game eventually.  I hope it'll change some things about how they release and sell games, but I'm not holding my breath.

Anyway, I've got a 4-clear streak going on Hades and feeling pretty good since I generally suck at action games.  I still haven't seen the credits but I think I'm close.

Edited by Zimbra
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Honestly, they really need to focus on making the game playable on next-gen consoles and not worry about current gen. Yes, they'll lose more money because of current gen install base, but it'll be a more stable product and more in-line with the PC version.

One of the reasons they delayed the game was they wanted it to be playable/stable for several different versions; I wonder what happened with that or did they rush through that because people complained about the delays.

Oh well, by the time I'm ready to Platinum Cyberpunk 2077, it'll be playable on a PS4!

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5 hours ago, Zimbra said:

That and the whole telling people to ask Sony for a refund without talking to Sony first probably made the situation untenable.

Something like this was going to happen to AAA game eventually.  I hope it'll change some things about how they release and sell games, but I'm not holding my breath.

Anyway, I've got a 4-clear streak going on Hades and feeling pretty good since I generally suck at action games.  I still haven't seen the credits but I think I'm close.

I recently got into Hades with the whole Greek mythology thing going on.  For a lesser game I wouldn't have the patience to go through each level from the start in the hopes to go further.  But they sure found a way to keep me hooked.  If the past few weeks have been any indication I may as well call it "Hades Friday" as that's the night I tend to play them.  I'm hoping it won't be too long before I make it all the way up as I got to the third world not too long ago.

Switching over to Smach Brothers I find it amusing that they said Sephiroth comes out on the 22nd but hey if you want him that bad just beat him on easy.  I'll try the harder challenges later but it's been wild playing as him.  And to cap it off I had my best battle yet when he faced Cloud without items.  They were all over the place hitting everything they could at each other.  And to top it off most of the knockouts were due to final smash as they would trade those back and forth.  In the end Sephiroth won and we were just blown away at the fact that this was happening in Smash.  Damn what a game.

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I don't play anything at launch - seems a few people might be adapting that strategy after this week - so I finally started Bloodstained. Absolutely everything I wanted it to be. I put in the cheat code to play it on Hard and it felt like a mistake at first, the first boss is particularly brutal that way, so I bit down and grinded out the first few hours and I'm happy to say the effort is still paying off.  Aria of Sorrow is my favorite Metroidvania/GBA game ever so I'm loving the soul/shard mechanic, I've already got all these layouts, got my Dullahan heads way beefed up, sticking to an INT/LCK build to keep everything effective and upgraded. I don't even have the double-jump yet, all these recipes and sidequests are keeping me busy without feeling overwhelming. Hard Mode goes from being brutal and grind-dependent somewhere after the second boss fight, now I'm in a really nice place where I'm alternating between feeling like a multi-spell murder machine and crawling back to save points with double-digit HP.

I've said it before and I'll probably keep saying it forever - IgaVania is the most perfect model I've ever encountered in game design. Bloodstained is the eighth game in the series and it (and all the others) aren't that different from Symphony, but every single one of them are engaging, rewarding, expertly-crafted and effortlessly playable. To keep things gothic, I was chatting the other week about how something as solid as Nocturnama is often considered Nick Cave's worst album. The worst IgaVania is Harmony of Dissonance and it's a joy to play. He can keep making them forever, I'll buy them.

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Played Wide Ocean Big Jacket this morning.

I like experimental indie games - especially on the Switch.

I like narrative-driven games.

I like games that try to do something different by not doing anything different and presenting the player with slice-of-life situations that lack any typical game elements (i.e., no shooting, magic realism, aliens, karate fighters, lasers, etc.)

I did not like Wide Ocean Big Jacket.  It's an indie drama about a childless couple who take their 13-year-old niece and her boyfriend camping.  Story is told almost entirely by dialogue.  When there is action, it's mundane stuff like gathering firewood or putting your tent back in the car trunk.

It's sharply written and much of the dialogue rings true, but there's practically no gameplay in this.  I've played plenty of walking simulators before and not had a problem with them, but Wide Ocean limits interactivity to a ridiculous degree.  The story is advanced through talking to characters and you know who to talk to because a prompt appears when a character has something to say.  If a character doesn't have something to say at that particular time, you can't interact with them at all.  Likewise, during the few exploration sections in the game, it's nearly impossible to get lost or go the wrong way because, if you're not heading the right way, you run out of real estate fast.  If you head towards a rock and that's not the way you're meant to go, you hit an invisible wall at the rock.  Nothing exists beyond it.  In any situation, there's only one way to advance the story and the game makes it obvious how to do that.

Characters were well-drawn and the dialogue seemed realistic, but the plot is more like a scene from a longer movie than a full story.  Game is also very short.  I clicked my way through in in just under an hour.

Interesting experiment, but didn't work for me.

 

 

Edited by Eoae
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Boy I don't know what's going on, story wise, in Journey, but the gameplay is pretty smooth and it looks really good too. Stuck at the fourth or fifth stage, though.

I'm about to give A Plague Tale: Innocence a shot. I've been wanting to play it for a long time, and since Cyberpunk is broken as fuck and the servers for Avengers are basically dead, well, here I am.

EDIT: And now I just bought Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter because all together it was only $10 and one had really good reviews (Deus Ex) and the other had average to decent reviews (Sherlock Holmes).

I have a game buying problem.

Edited by Casey
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I think Europe has a different sale going than NA, so going by nintendo.co.uk (which despite being British still asked me to accept "cookies")...

My goodness, HUE is a steal at that price. I talked up Ys Origin and Bloodstained in my last two posts in this thread and they're both half-off, both are superb action RPGs. I will always pimp Golf Story when I can. Donut County's good dumb fun, Gorogoa's good smart fun. GoNNER is certainly better than its price. Rock Boshers costs nothing, it's a rather difficult twin-stick shooter built to look like a ZX Spectrum game and I kind of loved it. Played a ton of Black Bird yesterday, I like shmups and Yoshiro Kimura (Onion Games) a lot. The game is very niche but it's certainly worth a look at, and it's exactly the kind of short-but-brilliant game you wait to go on sale. 

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1 minute ago, John E. Dynamite said:

I think Europe has a different sale going than NA, so going by nintendo.co.uk (which despite being British still asked me to accept "cookies")...

My goodness, HUE is a steal at that price. I talked up Ys Origin and Bloodstained in my last two posts in this thread and they're both half-off, both are superb action RPGs. I will always pimp Golf Story when I can. Donut County's good dumb fun, Gorogoa's good smart fun. GoNNER is certainly better than its price. Rock Boshers costs nothing, it's a rather difficult twin-stick shooter built to look like a ZX Spectrum game and I kind of loved it. Played a ton of Black Bird yesterday, I like shmups and Yoshiro Kimura (Onion Games) a lot. The game is very niche but it's certainly worth a look at, and it's exactly the kind of short-but-brilliant game you wait to go on sale. 

I think a lot are the same, but some are different, so happy for any recommendations.

Heard good things about Hue and Gorogoa, so might have a look (especially as Hue is so cheap). Ys, Bloodstained, Donut County and Golf Story are all games I have between Switch and PS4, but all very good shouts.

Cheers for the suggestions, much appreciated.

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so i had a lot of time off work this year and was able to finally play a LOT of games i'd always wanted to get into. here's my list of games that i beat for the first time in 2020 (dates in parenthesis):

NES:
Castlevania (5/4)
Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest (5/6)
Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse (5/31)
Kid Icarus (6/14)
Little Mermaid (6/3)
Little Nemo: Dream Master (4/27)
Metroid (3/22)

Game Boy:
Kid Icarus II: Of Myths and Monsters (6/16)
Kirby's Dreamland (6/25)
Metroid II (3/28)
Mole Mania (6/20)
TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan (4/3)

SNES:
Super Castlevania 4 (6/13)
Super Metroid (4/5)

PS1: 
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (8/31)

Wii:
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (12/11)

Wii-U:
Axiom Verge (9/9)

3ds:
Super Mario 3D Land (5/11)

Switch:
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (11/7)
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (11/17)
Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (1/19)

 

my biggest goals were were to complete Metroid and Kid Icarus, pandemic or no pandemic, so i feel an immense sense of accomplishment there. Kid Icarus I beat playing on the Wii-U and using save states (because fuck that game otherwise), but Metroid i played legitimately, drew my own maps, the whole 9 yards. And i loved it more than i would have ever imagined. Easily jumped into my top 5 NES games (a prestigious list, as it's my favorite system of all time). 

But i was most surprised by the Castlevania series. i figured that i would enjoy the NES games enough, which i did, but i couldn't stop. That's probably obvious in that i later played Castlevania 4 on the SNES, SotN on PS1, and both spiritual sequel Bloodstained games on the Switch. I also really enjoyed Holy Diver on the NES, although i haven't beaten that one (yet?). i even purchased Castlevania 64, although if/when i get to that game is a mystery and may never come (damn you backlog!)

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So we do Xmas morning with my teens today so they can be with their mother tomorrow and they FINALLY have their PS5. This also meant I could finally transfer over all our PS4 stuff and external HD. It's pretty rad but bittersweet, because now the 4 is just sitting there without much use besides my travel system for work trips. That's not nothing - I spent 69 nights this year out there - but it's still a weird feeling. We still have our 3 hooked up but you can't play those games on any other system unless they're been remade. 

So Merry Xmas Eve, my PS4. You can rest now. 

 

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