2022 VIDEO GAME CATCH ALL THREAD

[Tarheel Moneghetti]

FYI; official PS5 covers/faceplates went on sale in the US a few hours ago.  Just the red and black right now.  The other colors (purple, pink, light blue) will be available on sale later.   Right now, the covers are only available from direct from PlayStation.  They'll be available in stores in late Feb (2/18, irrc).

Ordered the black cover.  I like the white well enough - and may pick up a couple of the more colorful color options - but I always come back to black looking best in the room.  I bought the white OLED Switch at launch and have already sold it & bought the black model.

Somewhat looking forward to swapping out the cover.  Not so much for the cover itself, but for the SSD I'm going to buy this weekend.  Been holding off installing an SSD, but I'm going to pick up one this weekend and install it when I change covers.

[RIPPA]

Found my copy of Rock Band 4, installed in onto my Series X and dove back in.

Figured I would be starting from scratch no matter what since it had been forever since I played but I guess everything is in the cloud now and my old band was there if I wanted to revisit them.

My character is wearing a Mass Effect helmet so I forgot how much I missed this.

[Andrew POE!]

Got my 246th Platinum trophy with Laser League. Servers are shutting down on February 28, 2022; after the servers shutdown, the Platinum will be unobtainable. Don't play this game. It sucks.

[J.T.]

On 1/23/2022 at 2:43 PM, Andrew POE! said:

Got my 246th Platinum trophy with Laser League. Servers are shutting down on February 28, 2022; after the servers shutdown, the Platinum will be unobtainable. Don't play this game. It sucks.

Holy fuck, dude.  You coulda warned me how hard this Mad Max boss race is with Stank Gum.  I tried to roll with my fastest Archangel, Speed Demon, but she can't take a beating like a customized Magnum Opus can.  I think I have failed this mission at least five times because his fucking lackies keep tossing themselves in front of my shots when I get in firing range..  Back to the drawing board.  

This will be one of those boss battles where it is better to be lucky than good.  I thought I was doing good when I cracked the code on Deep Friar's mission to kill his runaway priest and return his cult artifact.

Edited January 25, 2022 by J.T.

[Andrew POE!]

1 hour ago, J.T. said:

Holy fuck, dude.  You coulda warned me how hard this Mad Max boss race is with Stank Gum.  I tried to roll with my fastest Archangel, Speed Demon, but she can't take a beating like a customized Magnum Opus can.  I think I have failed this mission at least five times because his fucking lackies keep tossing themselves in front of my shots when I get in firing range..  Back to the drawing board.  

This will be one of those boss battles where it is better to be lucky than good.  I thought I was doing good when I cracked the code on Deep Friar's mission to kill his runaway priest and return his cult artifact.

I don't recall having any problems with Stank Gum. I think I used the shotgun a few times during it and tried to ram the car off the road or I was so focused on Platinum'ing the game before the servers went down that it was a blur for me.

[Craig H]

While cleaning my basement this weekend, surprise surprise, I opened up a storage container and found a ton of video game crap, including the Rock Band drums, guitar, and mic. Now, this is for the 360...What are the chances any of this works with the Series X?

[Casey]

Isn’t Rock Band 4 the only game that’s backwards compatible?

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

Who's got a game update? I've got a game update.

DARK SOULS 2 SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN - DRANGLEIC CASTLE, HOWEVER...
...I might be done with this game. Not because of anything they did, but because a Remote Code Execution glitch was found, and they shut off the servers, and I'm not confident I'm going to beat this before Elden Ring anymore because I bet they're fixing Elden Ring first and then maaaaaybe they'll patch the old games, and I like the messages and bloodstains too much to consider playing it offline. So, I might be done. It's up to them.

DRAGON QUEST XI S - I HAVE ALL THE MAGIC DOODADS
This last weekend has been The Shits, and to offset it I spent a lot of time with my switch reassuring myself I wasn't having an actual heart attack by staring at Dragon Quest and doing a bunch of shit in it. I think I put 12 hours into this game this weekend? It's good, but it's Dragon Quest, so you probably know if you want to play this, and if you're not sure, go get a 3DS and the remake of Dragon Quest VII, which I think might be the best game in the series.

GEARS OF WAR 4 - WEIRDLY CONFLICTED?
So I just got done with Judgment, which if you missed that, here's my review: Judgment rips. This game has, majority, not ripped. The robot enemies are hideously boring, like a focus test group learning about the Vex and seeing if they can make Extremely Boring FIghts work in their game too. They cannot. And yet I have reached the point of the game where there's a bunch of monsters everywhere? Which was my biggest gripe about Gears 3? Well turns out that was just the fault of the people who did Gears 3, because so far all the monster killing shit in 4 has been great fun. The zone is actually spooky, the setup is disturbing but urgent, and the combat encounters shift from close to far range and it introduces a bunch of mechanics that both make cover strategically destructable and punishes you for either relying too heavily on that cover, or not prioritizing that cover the right way. Basically, all the cover that can explode can also turn into an enemy if the wrong enemy gets hit but not killed. And it'll do that for the entire room. So if you can't find him, you have to pick between reducing the cover before he gets set off, or finding him and hopefully having an easier fight with more options. This is Good Stuff. This is the thing Gears 4 is doing best. I hear in Gears 5 they make JD a villain and this is also an extremely good idea.

WINDJAMMERS 2 [4]
Gorgeous! And not, like, visually. Visually I think it's kind of a mess and I think the usual dotemu style of comic drawing does this game dirty because the lines make the characters look bad at certain angles. Mechanically, though! This thing fuckin Goes. It took a two button game to a four button game, and made those other two buttons such seizmic changes to the pace of the game that I just love it. There's actual mixups! The mixups that previously existed have another layer to them! There's incentives to reading player behavior! They added a bar, and it does both Offensive and Defensive stuff, and both options are HUGE comeback mechanics, but only if you know how to use them! Just a delightful action game.

[RIPPA]

5 hours ago, Casey said:

Isn’t Rock Band 4 the only game that’s backwards compatible?

That is my understanding too.

The reason I saw is because of music licensing and that the music was originally only licensed for the platform it was designed for and I guess Rock Band 4 was the only game designed with future consoles in mind. (not to mention the whole instrument thing)

[J.T.]

8 hours ago, Andrew POE! said:

I don't recall having any problems with Stank Gum. I think I used the shotgun a few times during it and tried to ram the car off the road or I was so focused on Platinum'ing the game before the servers went down that it was a blur for me.

I don't think you're thinking of the Stank Gum fight.  He's in some blazing fast truck and I can barely keep up with him during the death race.  I'm not even sure you can use the shotgun in the race.  The only weapons I can cycle through are my vehicle weapons and I have unlimited Thundersticks.

[cwoy2j]

10 hours ago, J.T. said:

Holy fuck, dude.  You coulda warned me how hard this Mad Max boss race is with Stank Gum.  I tried to roll with my fastest Archangel, Speed Demon, but she can't take a beating like a customized Magnum Opus can.  I think I have failed this mission at least five times because his fucking lackies keep tossing themselves in front of my shots when I get in firing range..  Back to the drawing board.  

This will be one of those boss battles where it is better to be lucky than good.  I thought I was doing good when I cracked the code on Deep Friar's mission to kill his runaway priest and return his cult artifact.

It's a pain in the ass battle but there's a trick. Basically don't use any armor and make your car as fast as possible. Hit him with that thunder gun harpoon right off the jump. Here's a thread from Reddit. I used this method after umpteen times trying to beat that damn race and it only took me two tries using this method.

 

[J.T.]

I tried that a couple of times but my old man reflexes were not up to the challenge.  I will make another attempt again later today after telework.  Got meetings all morning and we have to review the accreditation paperwork again.

After the humiliating defeats, I went back and did the mission that allowed me to unlock max damage for the Thunderpoon launcher, so perhaps that will make the difference.

Edited January 25, 2022 by J.T.

[cwoy2j]

4 minutes ago, J.T. said:

I tried that a couple of times but my old man reflexes were not up to the challenge.  I will make another attempt again later today after telework.  Got meetings all morning and we have to review the accreditation paperwork again.

After the humiliating defeats, I went back and did the mission that allowed me to unlock max damage for the Thunderpoon launcher, so perhaps that will make the difference.

It's definitely a frustrating mission and it ground the game to a halt for me. I kept trying to actually win the race but once I switched up my approach I got it. I just made the car as fast I could to stay up near him and mainly didn't bother with the other cars. I think you need to land about 5 hits on SG to end the race.

[J.T.]

9 minutes ago, cwoy2j said:

It's definitely a frustrating mission and it ground the game to a halt for me. I kept trying to actually win the race but once I switched up my approach I got it. I just made the car as fast I could to stay up near him and mainly didn't bother with the other cars. I think you need to land about 5 hits on SG to end the race.

The car handles like a buffalo with palsy in the turns.  The track is more my enemy that the legion cars.  I fear that if I drop too much armor, I'll get smashed trying to keep up with him and any spin-out is nearly game over.   This will be one of those things where I will just have to be lucky once.  I hate playing games like that.

Edited January 25, 2022 by J.T.

[J.T.]

I couldn't wait.  I stripped down my car and tried again.  Blew up Stank Gum on Attempt #4.  Now I have to fight my partner in the Thunderdome.  If she beats me and they make me run the car race again because no autosave, I am going to be really pissed off.

Holy shit, I fucking beat her with Rope a Dope and my favorite word in the whole game "saving" is now flashing across the top right of the screen. I never want to run that race again for the remainder of my life.

And holy fuck.

Spoiler

The big boss dude I chainsawed in the head at the start of the game is not dead.  It figures.

All of that frustration to now have to fight my way to the V8 engine I want for my car.

Edited January 25, 2022 by J.T.

[cwoy2j]

And don't worry, you weren't the only one who was frustrated by that fight. If you google it, you'll see tons of people who played the game bitching about it and with good reason. It was a giant pain in the ass and the way you win is counterintuitive to how you were successful in the game beforehand in that actually stripping down your car is the way to go. And there are no hints about that being the way to win.

Edited January 25, 2022 by cwoy2j

[J.T.]

17 minutes ago, cwoy2j said:

And don't worry, you weren't the only one who was frustrated by that fight. If you google it, you'll see tons of people who played the game bitching about it and with good reason. It was a giant pain in the ass and the way you win is counterintuitive to how you were successful in the game beforehand in that actually stripping down your car is the way to go. And there are no hints about that being the way to win.

I did develop the good habit of using nitro to boost past Stank Gum's road mines after watching the hint vids on YouTube.  The mines would detonate behind me and take out the legion cars on my ass.  That gave me opportunities to take a shot downrange.  Even with the boosted damage Thunderpoons, it took five shots to blow up Stank's rig.  That sucked.  I never ever want to do that ever again. 

That goes down with the Lavos fight in Chrono Trigger as one of the hardest and unfair things I've ever experienced in a video game.

Act 03 is now in the books and maybe I can try to see this game to the end without another rage quit scenario.

I am still angry about not winning the V8 engine, but Max's hallucination while getting medical treatment was kinda great.

Edited January 25, 2022 by J.T.

[J.T.]

Well, I ran the mission to secure the V8 engine for my car and unlocked the rest of my Archangel configs.  Now I have to go back and run the rest of these goddamned Death Runs with my remaining Archangels.  

I don't know why I am trying so hard to knockout the Car Combat challenges.  I cannot unlock the achievement for beating all of the non-repeating challenges because the Mad Max servers aren't running anymore and I can't beat the Scrap Crew challenges.

[Casey]

I bought the Lost Planet trilogy on Xbox because, fuck it, they were like $3-$5 each and I remember liking the first one YEARS ago.

[Andrew POE!]

9 hours ago, cwoy2j said:

It's a pain in the ass battle but there's a trick. Basically don't use any armor and make your car as fast as possible. Hit him with that thunder gun harpoon right off the jump. Here's a thread from Reddit. I used this method after umpteen times trying to beat that damn race and it only took me two tries using this method.

 

Now that I've seen this, I think this is what I did. I did this against every vehicle involved boss battle.

[Jiji]

Windjammers 2 is great. Neo Geo graphics are among my favourite and it takes some time to get used to the '80s comic style, but the gameplay is as good as ever. Graphics are like Streets of Rage 4, another fantastic sequel. 

[J.T.]

Finished running all of the Death Races and unlocked the achievements for completed Death Races, completing Death Races with Archangel configurations, and destroying at least one enemy in an Archangel config of my vehicle. 

Also took the time to raid some of the scavenging areas and locate all of the history relics.  I should be pretty close to finishing the game.

Edited January 25, 2022 by J.T.

[Death From Above]

21 hours ago, Lamp, broken circa 1988 said:

Who's got a game update? I've got a game update.

DARK SOULS 2 SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN - DRANGLEIC CASTLE, HOWEVER...
...I might be done with this game. Not because of anything they did, but because a Remote Code Execution glitch was found, and they shut off the servers, and I'm not confident I'm going to beat this before Elden Ring anymore because I bet they're fixing Elden Ring first and then maaaaaybe they'll patch the old games, and I like the messages and bloodstains too much to consider playing it offline. So, I might be done. It's up to them.

 

They will come back up (as DS 2 isn't the only game they took offline right now, most of their games run through the same servers I guess) but there's no publicly announced timetable on it. There's no way they just can PVP in Dark Souls 3 when it is still routinely one of the top 100 games on Steam. I am actually surprised things have been down as long as they have been.

I don't think I've ever paid money for a mod but the guy that runs the Blue Sentinel PVP Watchdog mod for DS3 actually patched this a day or two before FromSoft took the servers down and I tipped the guy on Ko-Fi, because honestly, he does damn good work.

[Casey]

Imagine my surprise when I start what I think is some random quest in Valhalla, and it turns out it's the DLC with Kassandra from Odyssey. Not that I ever finished that game or anything, but I liked her character. I'm not about to turn on my PS5 and install the game again just to play the first half of the DLC, so I guess I'll YouTube that. But yeah, didn't know it was her or this Crossover Stories thing, and was dreading having to fight my new lover Randvi. That would have been heartbreaking.

Oh, and I had a $25 giftcard due to MS Points so I picked up Agony, Kingdom Come: Deliverance (Royal Edition), Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen and Dreamfall Chapters. On Friday I'm going to buy the two Splinter Cell games I'm missing (Blacklist & Conviction), then I shouldn't buy another game on either platform until Horizon Forbidden West comes out (and nothing after that for awhile... MAYBE Sifu?)

[J.T.]

Well, I beat Max Max just in time before this meeting.  Ending is so fucking bleak which I suppose is par for the course in the Mad Max universe.  Only one achievement left and it's the one that's unobtainable, so I guess that counts as a Platinum.  There is a post-game but what's the point if I can't get the last achievement?

Depressing story has burned me out.  I will take a short gaming break and then fire up Witcher 3 this weekend.

Edited January 26, 2022 by J.T.