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2021 VIDEO GAME CATCH ALL THREAD


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4 hours ago, Casey said:

I played Greedfall for 5 minutes and promptly deleted it. Maybe I'm missing something great, but I get the feeling I'm not.

I was the same way.  I was kind of excited to play it, and I never got out of the prologue before I decided it wasn't worth my time.  I just didn't care about anything that was going on, didn't really like the combat, and decided I'd rather play another Trails game than use Greedfall as a palate cleanser.  

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1 hour ago, dogwelder said:

Greedfall's fun once you get past the prologue and land on the new territory, but the developers severely overhyped it.

I can see it being fun once you get to the new territory, but the prologue was dull and seemed to go on forever.  I might go back, but it didn't grab me at all.

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OK, so I can't get past this unskippable fight on Vampyr. It's not that I can't win the fight, I can. It's just that every time I get within touching distance of killing the mini-bosses, the game freezes. Shit is unplayable.

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I'm.... surprisingly satisfied with the ending to The Last of Us 2. It's a revenge story for sure, but it's also a story about how the concept of revenge can consume someone.

Spoiler

Ellie feeling like her life has no purpose because Joel saved her in Part 1 is heartbreaking, and probably a reason why she flings herself into this campaign of death (besides the obvious reason of Joel dying). Abby doesn't kill her or Dina towards the end, and Ellie & Dina both go on to live a quaint life for awhile, they have everything - as much as you can in this reality, anyway. But she still has to finish this. Even when she gets to where Abby is being held, and Abby is malnourished and near death, she still needs to finish it. But she can't do it in the end.

As far as the actual last scene of the game - I'm torn between the idea of Ellie becoming an older Joel, lonely and hardened by life experiences. Or maybe her and Dina did get back together (fan theories suggest since Ellie is wearing the bracelet when she goes back to the farmhouse, that they might be living in Jackson together now). But the Debbie Downer inside of me wants to think Ellie is a vagabond now, just roaming from one place to the next, having lost everything and everyone in the pursuit of revenge for the death of someone that she still hasn't forgiven for saving her life (and dooming humanity) all of those years before.

I honestly wouldn't mind if there was a Part 3, and it mainly focused on Abby and Lev (completing the circle, Abby = Joel/Lev = Ellie) and they find the Fireflies and now it's a race to find Ellie and finally do the surgery or whatever - maybe the new Fireflies have found someone that can make a vaccine, replacing Abby's father. If they go this route, I'd like for Ellie to be older, still with Dina, and JJ is a young teen like Ellie in the first game. The ending could be something like Ellie having to make a difficult choice - do the surgery and give what's left of humanity a vaccine, or fight for the life she has now with Dina and their son.

Just a great game, man. I'll eventually do another playthrough to get the rest of the trophies, but it's too fresh in my mind right now to immediately jump back in. My only complaint about the Abby parts of the game was that you constantly had to make shivs, so if a Clicker was around and you didn't have the material, you were FUCKED unless you wanted to waste ammunition (and that's if you had enough).

My next playthrough will be a NG+, probably on Moderate difficulty (because I'm lame and always do easy). And of course since I'm a TRUE GAMER, I bought some of the "cheat codes", and will probably do the Graphic Novel visual style too.

But, next up is a combination of The Forest (some IRL friends play it), Ghostrunner and Observer: System Redux. I bought all of those with my refund that Sony gave me for Cyberpunk 2077.

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Here's my recent list of playthroughs. A couple weeks off in December with nowhere to go and nothing to do contributed greatly here.

Fire Emblem : Three Houses - This was my first Fire Emblem game so played on hard-casual, but wish I'd done hard-classic now.  That X-Com vibe where every mission you could lose one of your characters would have been perfect, and the ability to skip back in the fights makes me think I could have pulled it off. Really liked how the first half was fairly casual /  friendly, then the intensity ramps up about ten-fold in the back half of the game. Great combat system and awesome large-scale battles in the missions.  As much as I'd love to replay it under the different houses, I just can't bring myself to do the more grindy parts of the story again ( finding missing items, fishing/eating to level up your character, etc..). I never did get anyone to master class either...

Hades - deserved the love it got. Hit some early barriers ( namely Meg and then Theseus and the Minotaur ), but by around run 20 I started on a 25-win streak and got up to level 16 in the Pact of Punishment. Then I started getting destroyed at level 17. I'm probably done with the game, but I spent something like 20+ hours on a 20 minute game, and loved every minute of it until the end. 

Shantae and The Pirate's Curse - This was...okay? Really short and maybe I was only half paying attention but I ended up needing to use a walkthrough to figure out where to go at one point. Pretty easy and was basically a palate cleanser after sinking 50 hours or so into Fire Emblem. 

Batbarian  - I probably loved this more than I should have. An old-school metroidvania, I'd definitely recommend it if you like these style of games. It was hard all the way through, and became harder in the back half of the game. Sort of proud of myself for getting through this one. 

Deponia : Doomsday - Figure I might as well finish the series off. At the same level as the third in the series, which means not good at all. Encountered a game breaking bug about 3/4s of the way through the story and no saves within the past couple hours, so just gave up on it. Don't imagine that I miss much. 

I'm playing Inmost now and not really enjoying it. It's not a bad game or anything, it is just so slow. 

 

 

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8 hours ago, Andrew POE! said:

Yikes, AxB. Any idea what caused it?

I just got my 202nd Platinum trophy with Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City. Probably one of the worst games I've ever seen.

The game is riddled with Bugs and crashes and freezes frequently no matter what. It seems like dialogue scenes you can just do, whereas combat and movement seem to be asking a lot of it. I did manage to get through the one fight eventually. Took a week, but I did it.

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On 1/7/2021 at 8:05 PM, supremebve said:

I was the same way.  I was kind of excited to play it, and I never got out of the prologue before I decided it wasn't worth my time.  I just didn't care about anything that was going on, didn't really like the combat, and decided I'd rather play another Trails game than use Greedfall as a palate cleanser.  

After some positive comments here I got the first Trails of Cold Steel game in a PS Store sale and basically spent my Christmas vacation beating it. I thought the game dropped of a bit in the last third or so (the big reveal close to the end was Russo-ish in coming out of nowhere) and the difficulty level was a bit inconsistent (I was playing on normal and besides three battles, it was rather straight-forward, but in those three battles I was using items left and right, there was one boss in particular, where I spent one item after another to be able to hit one S-Break after another), but apart from that it's definitely a great JRPG (with all the flaws that come with that genre).

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On 1/9/2021 at 11:03 AM, AxB said:

OK, so I can't get past this unskippable fight on Vampyr. It's not that I can't win the fight, I can. It's just that every time I get within touching distance of killing the mini-bosses, the game freezes. Shit is unplayable.

I really wanted to like Vampyr. I bought it around the start of the pandemic when it was on sale but the frequent crashes ruined the experience for me. The concept is nice though and it was interesting weighing the options on draining someone's life or not. Oddly enough combat never crashed the game, it was always during a dialogue segment.

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30 minutes ago, Robert s said:

After some positive comments here I got the first Trails of Cold Steel game in a PS Store sale and basically spent my Christmas vacation beating it. I thought the game dropped of a bit in the last third or so (the big reveal close to the end was Russo-ish in coming out of nowhere) and the difficulty level was a bit inconsistent (I was playing on normal and besides three battles, it was rather straight-forward, but in those three battles I was using items left and right, there was one boss in particular, where I spent one item after another to be able to hit one S-Break after another), but apart from that it's definitely a great JRPG (with all the flaws that come with that genre).

Yeah, there are some pretty uneven storytelling moments, but overall I think the narrative ended up better than most of what we get from video games.  I think the biggest issue with the narrative is that none of the villains get enough screentime to really make you understand their motivations.  The sheer number of villains they introduce in the next 2 games should have been cut by 75% and they should have focused on making the remaining villains matter.

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12 hours ago, AxB said:

The game is riddled with Bugs and crashes and freezes frequently no matter what. It seems like dialogue scenes you can just do, whereas combat and movement seem to be asking a lot of it. I did manage to get through the one fight eventually. Took a week, but I did it.

From what I've read about the issue, it appears to be occurring mainly on base PS4s and/or with external storage attached. I have external storage attached to my PS4 Pro, so whenever I play it, I'll remove the storage or attempt it on my PS5.

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I'm hoping my PS5 that I ordered isn't caught up in some weird shipping/tariff change issue. I ordered in mid-December with an expected arrival date of 01/12 but I haven't gotten any updated info. 

Besides that, I'm finally going to start Outer Worlds. I just have a habit of getting anxious of starting a new game and just revert back to playing NBA2K because I can just play one or two games before bed.

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Random thoughts after hooking up my new PS5 and spending the weekend playing PS5 and XBSX (lol, even as an acronym, the X consoles have awkward names).

-- I think I prefer the Series X to PS5.  Prefer the design, prefer the interface.  I've been a fan of Xbox hardware since the original Xbox, so I'm hoping the software division figures it out this gen.  I'm not really digging what Sony is doing right now aside from producing quality first-party exclusives.

-- The Xbox launch lineup is decent, but sort of vanilla to me.  Lack of exclusives still hurts it.  Meanwhile, Sony's launch lineup included a number of great first-party exclusives, and The Pathless (third-party exclusive).  Games still matter.  I'm not a Sony superfan any more, but it's hard to ignore their library.

--Miles Morales looked stunning on PS4, but looks and plays noticeably better on PS5.  Wasn't quite as wowed by the difference on other games (Pathless, Sackboy, and Miles Morale all looked great on last gen hardware).  Ori and the Will of the Wisps makes a number of noticeable improvements on Series X, but I enjoyed the X Box One version just fine, so I'm not sure the improvements enhance my experience any.  Same with some of the other enhanced PS4/Xbox One titles I sampled.  Ghost of Tsushima looks and plays great at a higher frame rate, but i don't feel like it's going to push the envelope in ways I care much about to make for a better overall experience,

-- Right now, the older libraries are more of a draw than the PS5 libraries.  If you don't care about that, I'd recommend holding off to upgrade.  The launch libraries were solid, but 2021 is a bit of an unknown for both consoles.  Seems like a bit of a lull following the launch slate.  That said, having access to virtually the entire PS4 catalog is fantastic (PS4 library is probably my favorite ever; larger than previous generations, more and better exclusives than Xbox One, more well-rounded than Switch).  I'm not overly excited by Xbox One catalog (to the point that I never bought the console), but it has some good stuff.  XBSX being able to play a handful of Xbox games and 500+ X360 titles is a big plus for me.  There are quite a few b/c compatible titles I want in my library.  Because of b/c, I'll probably make the Series X my go-to console for multiplatform games. 

-- Astro's Playroom probably should have been in my Top 10 for 2020.  So much fun, and it's basically intended as a tech demo.

-- Having now played a bit of Ori on Xbox, the Switch ports are textbook examples of how to port a game to Switch.

-- Demon's Souls looks great.  Will start it later this week.

- Game Pass seems like a great value than I unfortunately do not care about at all.  Took me a long while to get used to downloading games instead of buying physical editions.  Going to take a long while still to embrace the concept of "renting" games for the month.

 

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4 hours ago, Casey said:

You're doing yourself a disservice if you haven't played Miles Morales (or the original) in 60fps.

I played an hour or two of the PS5 edition over the weekend and liked it a lot.  I played through the game on my PS4 Pro back in November so I'm not in a big hurry to dive back into it, but I do intend to play the PS5 edition sometime soonish (this year)?  I'll probably buy the Ultimate Edition sometime this month and play through the first game before I get back to Miles Morales.  

Honestly, my backlog pile right now is mostly Switch and Xbox One games.  I didn't buy an XOne last gen, so there's a number of games from that console I've never played at all.  Sony may take a backseat this gen.  We'll see.

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Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order just got a next-gen upgrade.

Quote

High Level Summary of Features:

  • Improved framerate on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5
  • Improved dynamic resolution ranges, for a higher resolution experience on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5
  • Improved post-processing resolution for Xbox Series X and PS5. (Not Xbox Series S)

 

Console Specifics:

Xbox Series S

  • Framerate has been increased to 60 FPS (up from 45 FPS)

 

Xbox Series X Performance mode

  • Framerate has been increased to 60 FPS
  • Dynamic resolution added in the range of 1080p to 1440p

 

Xbox Series X Normal mode (non-performance mode)

  • Postprocessing has been increased to 4K
  • Dynamic resolution in the range of 1512p to 2160p

 

PlayStation 5

  • Framerate has been increased to 60 FPS (up from 45 FPS)
  • Postprocessing increased to 1440p
  • Dynamic resolution has been disabled and the game is rendering at 1200p (up from 810-1080p)


EDIT: Oh, and FINALLY my pre-order for the Collector's Edition of CrossCode for the PS4 has been shipped from Strictly Limited. I believe the original time table was for everyone to have their stuff by November/December but I'm guessing COVID fucked everything up.

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Has anyone tried to upgrade FIFA21 to the PS5 version? I bought the PS4 disc version since it was on sale and it's supposed to offer the upgrade like Madden. However when I inserted the disc, there wasn't the option to download the PS5 like it was for Madden.

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Playing Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Complete Edition and it seems decent enough, but hardly the sort of thing that inspires a cult following.  Initial impression is that it's a decent little beat-em-up, but the not in the class of classic earlier beat-em-ups and some of the better ones from the PS4 generation.  I don't feel like I'll end up enjoying it nearly as much as Street of Rage 4 or River City Girls, for example.

That's just my opinion.  As always, your mileage may vary.   I wonder if i'd feel differently if I was more attached to the source material.  I've never watched the movies or read the comic/graphic novel series and likely never will.  I do sorta know the wikipedia summary (Scott Pilgrim wants to romance Ramona Flowers by fighting her boyfriends who have.... weird powers or something).  The game seems to assume I'm familiar with the setup, so it gives me the bare basics and none of it seems any too interesting.  Granted, most beat-em-ups have even less backstory.

Nice change of pace from Surviving Mars, though.  I'm a bit weary of watching my poor colonists die horribly due to a variety of ill-considered strategic planning decisions.

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I ended up buying Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World this afternoon, but was saddened to hear the online isn't really working.

Got my 203rd Platinum trophy with Red Faction Armageddon. Surprisingly decent third person shooter but not quite as diverse as Red Faction Guerrilla was.

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