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2021 VIDEO GAME CATCH ALL THREAD


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Couldn't sleep, so I spent several hours with Gods Will Fall last night, and I am digging everything about it.  It's basically a soulslike with roguelike elements.  Beautiful art style; large, varied labyrinths to explore; great boss designs; etc.  Really like a lot of the little touches.  If one of your party of eight perishes in one of the god's lairs, you often get one of the remaining party members overcome with grief because the deceased was a friend/relative/saved his life, etc.  That character then finds their courage and gets overcome with rage and their stats go up since they want to be the next member sent into the lair to revenge their fallen comrade.  Lol, if you don't let them go in and send another character, the first character is overcome with shame and becomes depressed, so his stats go down.  It's a simple version of Darkest Dungeon's mental health mechanic.  

Some reviewers aren't digging the difficulty.  Game is brutal (it's a soulslike.  What do you expect?).  Made worse by the roguelike elements.  Difficulty of each dungeon is random.  Some runs will be fairly easy.  Other runs will be too hard for your character.  It varies with each playthrough.  There's no way to tell in advance what the difficulty level of the dungeon will be until you go in and, once you're in, you can't leave until you die or kill the boss.

For that matter, the gods' health meters at the start of battles are either random or maybe tied to how many minions you kill in its lair.  Not entirely sure which.  

Early impression: BUY! BUY! BUY!

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3 hours ago, Eoae said:

Couldn't sleep, so I spent several hours with Gods Will Fall last night, and I am digging everything about it.  It's basically a soulslike with roguelike elements.  Beautiful art style; large, varied labyrinths to explore; great boss designs; etc.  Really like a lot of the little touches.  If one of your party of eight perishes in one of the god's lairs, you often get one of the remaining party members overcome with grief because the deceased was a friend/relative/saved his life, etc.  That character then finds their courage and gets overcome with rage and their stats go up since they want to be the next member sent into the lair to revenge their fallen comrade.  Lol, if you don't let them go in and send another character, the first character is overcome with shame and becomes depressed, so his stats go down.  It's a simple version of Darkest Dungeon's mental health mechanic.  

Some reviewers aren't digging the difficulty.  Game is brutal (it's a soulslike.  What do you expect?).  Made worse by the roguelike elements.  Difficulty of each dungeon is random.  Some runs will be fairly easy.  Other runs will be too hard for your character.  It varies with each playthrough.  There's no way to tell in advance what the difficulty level of the dungeon will be until you go in and, once you're in, you can't leave until you die or kill the boss.

For that matter, the gods' health meters at the start of battles are either random or maybe tied to how many minions you kill in its lair.  Not entirely sure which.  

Early impression: BUY! BUY! BUY!

You had me at 'soulslike.'

I just got paid and I was trying not to buy video games.

Fuck.

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1 hour ago, Andrew POE! said:

You had me at 'soulslike.'

I just got paid and I was trying not to buy video games.

Fuck.

Lol, same here.  I've downloaded two games and three dlc's this week.  And The Pedestrian just hit the PSN Store this afternoon, so I'll be purchasing it when I get home from work.  So much for light week.  Next week may not be better.  Definitely grabbing the Nioh Remastered Collection for PS5 and Blue Fire for Switch.

Re: Gods Will Fall.  I'd watch the trailer and maybe read a few reviews.  Some reviewers are hating the difficulty and think it's a slog.

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13 minutes ago, Eoae said:

Lol, same here.  I've downloaded two games and three dlc's this week.  And The Pedestrian just hit the PSN Store this afternoon, so I'll be purchasing it when I get home from work.  So much for light week.  Next week may not be better.  Definitely grabbing the Nioh Remastered Collection for PS5 and Blue Fire for Switch.

Re: Gods Will Fall.  I'd watch the trailer and maybe read a few reviews.  Some reviewers are hating the difficulty and think it's a slog.

They must have never played Titan Souls or Salt And Sanctuary.

The Pedestrian doesn't have a Platinum but it also looks good.

Nioh Collection is next week too???

Fuck. I'll be broke by next week.

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46 minutes ago, Andrew POE! said:

Nioh Collection is next week too???

Yeah, Nioh Remastered Collection is scheduled to be released for PS5 on the 5th.  Contains both Nioh games, along with all dlc and patches.  Both games have been remastered for the PS5 (some graphical improvements, higher frame rates, etc.).  A Complete Edition of Nioh 2 with the DLC included is also being released for PS4, 

Week after that is Little Nightmares II and Switch remaster of Super Mario 3D World.  I'm probably picking up at least 2-3 games every week this month.  So much for the backlog pile.  

 

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On 1/28/2021 at 1:39 AM, D.Z said:

Factor 5 Boss would like to make a Mario Maker style Turrican.

Factor 5 and Turrican are a thing in 2021? I remember when I first played a Turrican game on my Commodore 64 (I think it was a playable demo of Turrican 2), how blown away I was with what they got of the old breadbox. Seriously, this was from a technical point-of-view as impressive as what John Carmack did with the Commander Keen games, Wolfenstein 3D and Doom (I am not sure if it is a coincidence or fate or whatever that both Carmack as the programmer behind the early Turrican games (Manfred Trenz) managed to somewhat port Super Mario to home computers).

Edited by Robert s
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1 hour ago, Robert s said:

Factor 5 and Turrican are a thing in 2021? 

A compilation of the first four games in the franchise was released for Switch and PS4 earlier this week.

And, yeah. Factor 5 is still around.  Saw an interview with the studio head a day or so ago.  Apparently the co-founders stayed in touch after the studio was closed and reopened the studio in 2017.

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I bought the Turrican Flashback Collection, which contains the Amiga ports of the first 2 games, plus the console exclusives Mega Turrican and Super Turrican. The emulation is good. The games are emblematic of late 80s europlatformers; if you've played them before or have a soft spot for the genre you will probably be happy. (I had a pirated copy of the C64 original and got Super Turrican used when a video store was selling it) If you only know them as "classics" you haven't actually experienced, save your thirty bucks. You will probably be much happier just putting on the soundtracks via Spotify or YouTube, looking at the first game's title screen and imagining what you want the game to be like, because they are everything right AND wrong with Amiga gaming.

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Random thoughts:

Gravity Rush Remastered is so weird, and different, and visually pretty good looking for a PS Vita to PS4 remaster. It's the worth the $5 I paid for it, for sure.

Uncharted 4 is insanely fun and fucking gorgeous to look at. I hated all of the other games in the series (well, 1 & 2) because the controls were ass, but this was is way better. The trophy list for it is insane, I'm sure @Andrew POE!knows what I'm talking about. You have to replay the game like 4 times to get one trophy per game, and then there's one where you have to beat the game in 6 hours or less. Jesus.

I love the new Tomb Raider games, and I've been playing through them recently anyway - but with the announcement of what they're aiming for with the new game, and the Netflix anime... I decided to install Shadow of the Tomb Raider Definite Edition. I barely remember playing it on Xbox One when it was originally released, and I don't think I ever beat it, so this should be fun. I know a lot of people didn't like it as much as the other two, something about it's more combat/stealth heavy rather than tombs/puzzles, I think? Yeah I'm okay with that, 100%.

And I'm well on my way to getting the platinum for Cosmic Star Heroine. I booted up Avengers for a game or two earlier in the day, and I've STILL yet to have trophies like 50 strongboxes and 30 (I think?) war zones completed at Challenge III or higher. I'm starting to think you have to do those in one sitting to get the trophies to pop or something. Ugh.

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DISCO ELYSIUM [4]
It's a winter of backlog clearing and first on the plate was that I never finished my playthrough of this game. When I came back to my save, I discovered that the state I had left the game in was, uh, Catastrophic. I got a very bad set of ending circumstances, but in the skeleton of what I did I saw the amazing nature of everything I could have done and how much space there was for things to change. It's a 20 hour RPG that upon completion I immediately wanted to play again. This is, retroactively, the best game of 2019, and in totality, one of the finer things I've seen in my time playing games.

DONUT COUNTY [1]
And this is not. While i was tempted to play it at release, something kept me from it. Namely, a slowly increasing pit in my stomach over "indie games" and the homogenization of a codified style, where they become these pastel gelatin molds with googly eyes and they're trusting writing and "charm" to get the rest of the way. The success of the style only succeeds in making me feel really fucking insane. I made it three levels into this before the concept of doing more of it caused me to immediately stop and uninstall it. Game Pass is good because it gives me a chance to play an old game and be like "welp turns out I was right to never try this." I'm glad other people liked it, even if it makes my life harder to know that.

MARS MATRIX [3]
I briefly entertained becoming a Shmup guy again in my desire to have an action game I could play. This is one of them. Unfortunately, repetition makes me feel really bad so I can't become a true shmup high score chasing sort.

MONSTER HUNTER RISE DEMO [3]
A quick moment to re-establish what my scale means: 3 = "I don't regret playing this." The phrasing is purposefully nebulous to allow for situations like this: I am so glad they put out a demo so I could have a chance to see what they did to the Hunting Horn and that I could find out before I bought it. If I had learned it through buying it, it would be the end of me playing Monster Hunter games and you would be reading a screed. But since it didn't cost me anything to find out my weapon is no longer in the game and therefore I have nothing I enjoy doing in the game, I'm free! That's $60 I get to put somewhere else! Thanks Monster Hunter Rise Demo!

I wrote this a day after I played it because if I wrote it in the middle of mourning the death of my sweet beautiful Hunting Horn, I'd lack the hindsight to understand that the people who worked on The Least Popular Weapon In The Game probably see that as a problem and would rather see it get played more. I hope for their sake it works.

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2 hours ago, Casey said:

 

Uncharted 4 is insanely fun and fucking gorgeous to look at. I hated all of the other games in the series (well, 1 & 2) because the controls were ass, but this was is way better. The trophy list for it is insane, I'm sure @Andrew POE!knows what I'm talking about. You have to replay the game like 4 times to get one trophy per game, and then there's one where you have to beat the game in 6 hours or less. Jesus.

 

I actually used a glitch to get the Speedrun and Crushing trophies at once. This only works for the disc version.

1) Beat the game on any difficulty.

2) Delete the patch and uninstall game.

3) Install the game and leave it at 1.00.

4) Go to the last chapter (Epilogue) on Crushing.

5) Ding! You'll get Crushing and Speedrun trophies at the end of it!

If you do it legit, it's harder. But yes, the trophy list is insane, but at least it's not Uncharted 2 and 3's PS3 DLC trophies (shudders).

Edited by Andrew POE!
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Donut County is SO GOOD. That's a bummer that you didn't enjoy it, @Lamp, broken circa 1988 I think it's best played on Switch (or mobile if it's on that), though. Using the touch screen to suck everything up just FEELS good. Actually, it's one of the best tactile-feeling games that I've played at least in the past few years. It's also really short, like two hours long, so it didn't feel like it overstayed its welcome with me. The only thing that I thought was sort of weird was the boss fight at the end, which is very much against the chill nature of most of the gameplay. It's not bad, but it feels a bit jarring. 

I also LOVE the "level cleared" music. 

Those Annapurna-published games have not yet put me wrong. 

We do align on Mars Matrix, though. It's one of my favorite Dreamcast games. Whenever I just want to play dope arcade-style shit, I bust that console out. It came out at the wrong time because everyone wanted more long-form cinematic storytelling like FFVII and such, but it is the greatest home arcade machine of all time this side of a PC with MAME installed on it. 

Edited by Smelly McUgly
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9 hours ago, Casey said:

Gravity Rush Remastered is so weird, and different, and visually pretty good looking for a PS Vita to PS4 remaster. It's the worth the $5 I paid for it, for sure.

I played it on VITA but I was pleased to see this on sale so cheap. The Retro / Remake thing they've got going on PSN is one of their better sales in awhile and I encourage people to stock up. Gravity Rush was a breeze to play through. The story was just kind of there but it reminded me of my favorite 3D avant-platformers like Jet Set Radio Future and Portal. We take moving a character around in three-dimensional spaces for granted - Gravity Rush proved you can really push those limits and still have something that's very accessible and likeable.

9 hours ago, Lamp, broken circa 1988 said:

DONUT COUNTY [1]
And this is not. While i was tempted to play it at release, something kept me from it. Namely, a slowly increasing pit in my stomach over "indie games" and the homogenization of a codified style, where they become these pastel gelatin molds with googly eyes and they're trusting writing and "charm" to get the rest of the way. The success of the style only succeeds in making me feel really fucking insane. I made it three levels into this before the concept of doing more of it caused me to immediately stop and uninstall it. Game Pass is good because it gives me a chance to play an old game and be like "welp turns out I was right to never try this." I'm glad other people liked it, even if it makes my life harder to know that.

MARS MATRIX [3]
I briefly entertained becoming a Shmup guy again in my desire to have an action game I could play. This is one of them. Unfortunately, repetition makes me feel really bad so I can't become a true shmup high score chasing sort.

I mildly recommended Donut County to someone a few pages back alongside Gorogoa and felt a pang of regret afterward, they're both critical darlings but neither really moved me. I know what you mean with indie homogenization and I wish there was more written about the feeling you mentioned because I can't figure it out myself. Some gameplay-light indies click with me and others don't. I'm halfway done with Thomas Was Alone and I'm really enjoying it. The Stanley Parable worked just fine for me. But I'll never forget how much I hated (and I mean really hatedJourney and I'm eyeing my unplayed copy of Gris with some amount of dread.

Mars Matrix is fuckin' dope for what it is. I wish more shmups prioritized replayability the way R Type FinalDarius Gaiden or Bangai-O! do (Sky Force had a good idea too). I don't mind as much when a shmup is part of a big arcade compilation, but MM is pretty close to perfect for a single-game arcade thing.

Edited by John E. Dynamite
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On 1/28/2021 at 3:42 PM, Kevin Wilson said:

Not to go back too far in the thread, but here is my issue with games that do this - getting the weapons, even with a guide, is time consuming. By the time 99% of gamers are doing it, its towards the end game, or after the end game. When I beat AC, I could have been dual wielding a branch and a butter knife and killed anything I wanted. So, basically gamers are taking hours and hours to get admittedly cool items, that they don't even need since there is no challenge in combat left anyway. So they use them a few times to kill a bear and say "wow that was cool!" then they have to wait for the DLC to maybe really use them properly. Although still not need them.

So I guess what I am saying is I'd rather they made these things a little more accessible, and easier to access around mid-game, so fans of the game aren't going through all the hassle to get weapons they don't actually need to help them with defeating anything left in the game.

That's a good point. It's just a matter of ocd at this point. I definitely don't need Excalibur, it's just a matter of want. I definitely understand your point of making it more convenient to get it mid-game to be actually useful in-game.

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Yep, Gris is probably my favorite of the games mentioned in the last few posts.  Though I like "critical darling" platformers and puzzle games, so I enjoyed every game mentioned. 

I thought Dount County was a bit of a lightweight and not really something that's going to leave a lasting impression, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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