What's everybody playing?

[Turo602]

I'm not entirely sure, because my memory is a bit foggy on the subject, but didn't naughty dog changed Ellie's appearance from the first showings of the game in relation to the final product because of the Ellen Page confusion? I think Ellie's face changed a bit, or at least I remember reading something about it, but like I said, I'm not totally sure.

Yeah, though I think according to Naughty Dog, it was because they wanted her to look closer to Ashley Johnson. Honestly, I think the timing was the biggest factor. I feel like people kept making the comparison between Ellie and Ellen Page so much that she finally caught wind of it and the only reason she said anything was due to conflict of interest with her very own game that was coming out around the same time.

 

[Mr.R]

Yeah, though I think according to Naughty Dog, it was because they wanted her to look closer to Ashley Johnson. Honestly, I think the timing was the biggest factor. I feel like people kept making the comparison between Ellie and Ellen Page so much that she finally caught wind of it and the only reason she said anything was due to conflict of interest with her very own game that was coming out around the same time.

If that's their excuse well...I don't know. Ellie doesn't look like Ashley Johnson much. Maybe the resemblance to Elle Page wasn't even proposital on ND's part but...saying they changed to look like Ashley looked like a last-hour excuse.

Although I can understand Page's side a bit. I mean, she had her own game and it would be bad for people to keep linking her to a game she wasn't even in (and that would end up being a huge success), while Beyond Two Souls was out there. As for Beyond Two Souls...eh...David Cage's games are an acquired taste in my opinion. They never captured me much (although I still want to give Detroit a chance, if I see it cheap), but I can understand their appeal.

 

[MartinMilk]

The last of us 2. I love it

 

[Jonipoon]

I'm playing a relatively new but unknown game called "The Sinking City", a mix between survival horror and mystery/detective game set in a world inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. It's made by a smaller studio but the graphics are actually not too shabby. The gameplay is quite frustrating not to mention the horrible shooting mechanics, yet there is something fascinating about the overall presentation. Characters act weird but in a good way, sort of like you're inside a twisted dream. There is a "psychological meter" that can go down and create live hallucinations, and if you're not paying attention the hallucinations can come to life and attack you. It messes with your head and has a great way of communicating psychological horror in that way. The story is not that great so far, and the lack of cinematic cutscenes is disappointing. Yet I can't stop playing, and I intend to solve the mystery.

 

[Awebb]

The Sinking City is yet another beautiful and interesting game I will never finish because of the gameplay. Ugh, but ugh no.

 

[Jonipoon]

It’s frustrating, yes. I feel like the developers had great aspirations but weren’t quite able to ”nail it”. Not only because of budget restrictions but also by making some really dumb decisions for the gameplay mechanics.

For instance, the way that you have to personally find and mark the location for every clue and quest is an interesting idea on paper, but they implemented it poorly. I get it, they want you to feel like an actual detective, but did they really have to design it so that everything has to be done manually? You’re given basically zero directions on where to go beside some vague street hint, the rest is up to you. The worst part is that there isn’t even a live map of the world to look at during gameplay, so everytime you want to know where you’re located you have to open the map. For an open-world game with a fairly large map, this was a mistake on their part. It also doesn’t help that the lackluster open-world looks almost the same everywhere, which makes it extremely difficult to navigate through the streets even when you return to a previous area.

The story did pick up a little for me now though, and there were actually a few neat cutscenes. So I’ll continue.

 

[KennedyKiller]

Well, Star Wars: Battlefront II was free for PS Plus this month. So I figured I'd download it and play that, since free translates to "Not giving EA money."

 

[Awebb]

Well, Star Wars: Battlefront II was free for PS Plus this month. So I figured I'd download it and play that, since free translates to "Not giving EA money."

You just gave them "clicks" anyway, increasing their playerbase, so some manager can say how the game was basically ripped out of their hands on the free month. This game falls under my "not even pirate" rule.

 

[Springhosen]

Replaying the first 3 Crash Bandicoot games via the N Sane Trilogy in preparation for Crash 4.

I finished the first one without any care for the gems and what not but I'm taking a different approach with Cortex Strikes Back. (Probably because that was my first Crash game.)

Gotta say: Diggin' It and its boxes can go screw.

 

[Mr.R]

After finishing up with AC4 (still have to play Ade's DLC, but I need a rest from AC for now) I've been playing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. I'm...equally happy and equally frustrated. I think I'm past half of the game but...I don't know. It's a good game...ish. I think it lays an important foundation for an amazing sequel, but what we've got is...okay at best. First, the game has a very, very poor performace for a AAA game. I don't know if this game plays better on the PS4 pro, but on my regular PS4, there's A LOT of render delay on textures. It's not uncommon for you to arrive in a area with no detail and you can see the textures slowly loading in front of you. The frame rate is all over the place, but not too bad. The performace of this game reminds me of Wolfenstein New Order and Alien Isolation on the PS3. Games made with the next generation in mind, that have very poor optimization on the PS3. Yet, SWJFO was not made with the PS5 in mind so...there's no good excuse for how poorly the game performs.

As for combat and plataforming...it's equally badass and equally frustrating. The game asks a lot of precision from the player, but it doesn't give much precision back. When you're jumping, sliding or swinging on ropes, you don't feel safe on your movements, like you feel on Tomb Raider and Uncharted (since this game takes a lot of inspiration from those two) and combat is...not easy to get a hang on. It's interesting, that you need to face every encounter seriously, because even a pack of the weakest creatures can seriously damage you, at the same time your movement doesn't feel very precise. The character take more frames than we used to in actions like blocking and dodging and even though the game revolves around parrying, the timing is weird because the character doesn't block as soon as you press the button, because of a little animation, so you need to parry in advance, but not too advanced. Weird. I mean, I'm having my fun, but dying because of flimsy plataform controls or because you repeatedly asked your little droid for the health refil and he simply didn't gave you (again, you can't be in the middle of animation to heal) it's a bummer. However, when you do everything right in the middle of a battle against lot of enemies, pushing and pulling them using the force, deflecting blasts, blocking and parrying and you finish all of them practically unscathed...those moments you can really look around the scenario and feel a badass. It's very cool.

All that being said, it's a must have for every SW fan, especially these days, since it's not very expensive. Story is good, the world is amazing, as does the characters and characterization. Plus, it has a cool MetroidVania vibes, as you unlock more paths with the powers and skills you get. I would've been a little disappointed if I had paid full price on release back then, but from what I've paid to get the game, I can't complain. It has its ups and downs, but none of this is a deal breaker (you can always increase parry timing in the menus, or mess with the difficulty to enjoy the experience), at least not for me. It's worth if you find in a good price.

 

[Jen]

I started Red Dead Redemption 2 last night. I've not done much, but it seems pretty good so far. Really hoping that I love it as much as the first one.

 

[Jonipoon]

I'm going to take back what I previously said about The Sinking City. Once you get past the new mechanics, it's actually quite immersive and also very enjoyable to get into the role as a detective figuring out where to go next. I feel like I'm nearing the end of the main story, and I'm trying to solve as many side quests as I can before that (I read somewhere that the side quests won't be open once you complete the main story).

It's a very neat game, much better than I expected, and the psychological aspect is really where they hit the mark. Lovecraftian horror is no easy task to take on, but I feel they did a goob job capturing that atmosphere.

 

[bSTAR_182]

I started Red Dead Redemption 2 last night. I've not done much, but it seems pretty good so far. Really hoping that I love it as much as the first one.

I’m excited to hear what you think!
It’s such a beautiful game, one that I can easily give a solid 10/10. I didn’t think they could outdo the first one but dammit they did.

 

[Turo602]

Been playing Horizon: Zero Dawn and having a lot of fun with it. Reminds me a lot of Tomb Raider with a hint of Zelda. I'm still not 100% sold on the characters and story, but hopefully that changes by the end of the game. There is definitely some intrigue to the world they created here though, so I'm quite hooked.

 

[Jonipoon]

Been playing Horizon: Zero Dawn and having a lot of fun with it. Reminds me a lot of Tomb Raider with a hint of Zelda. I'm still not 100% sold on the characters and story, but hopefully that changes by the end of the game. There is definitely some intrigue to the world they created here though, so I'm quite hooked.

I managed to play through around half of the game's main story before giving up. Not because I didn't like it, I just felt it took too long. The open world was huge but most of the character interactions came off as very stiff and repetitive. I wish I had completed it though because its such a beautiful and unique game. I loved exploring the old caves in search for lost technology and diaries from "the old ones".

 

[Turo602]

I managed to play through around half of the game's main story before giving up. Not because I didn't like it, I just felt it took too long. The open world was huge but most of the character interactions came off as very stiff and repetitive. I wish I had completed it though because its such a beautiful and unique game. I loved exploring the old caves in search for lost technology and diaries from "the old ones".

Dude, I know exactly what you mean about the character interactions. They can drone on too long and the voice acting is so laughable too. It's bad enough that the facial animations are pretty stiff, but a lot of the NPCs have awful voices. It's so jarring seeing black and native American looking characters sounding like wimpy nerdy white guys. :lol:

 

[Flipqy42]

Been marathoning the DMC series again before finally playing DMC5 for the first time.

 

[Awebb]

My girlfriend decided to scratch the Breath of the Wild itch with Ghost of Tsushima and I haven't been this positively surprised in years. I thought this game would suffer all the made in USA open world deceases (boring collectables, waypoint floating markers left and right and climbing towers to discover the map) and I wasn't sure what to expect from the depiction of Japanese culture by a non-Japanese studio, but this game looks like the studio did its homework pretty well. I usually have a long list of complaints whenever I start a new game, but this does not annoy me too much.

The good

• The framerate is great and the amount of motion blur is exactly what the game needs. I usually hate motion blur (like really hate, like major psychotic episodes hate), but this game makes it look like a good idea.
• The open world elements all seem interesting. There are a ton of collectable categories, but most of them either have a codex function or increase your stats and give you new abilities.
• The "skill tree" adds gameplay instead of reducing it. Many open world games use skills to get rid of game mechanics, like making your footsteps silent (and thereby eliminate an AI mechanic). GoT instead adds capabilities, like healing you on a perfect parry or giving you additional moves and combos.
• There are not as many unnecessary HUD markers as in other games of this type. While there are floating mission markers on occasion, the main waypoint mechanic are leafs getting blown by the wind into the direction of your map marker.
• The combat is crisp. Button mashing = you're dead. Think Nioh without the fantasy stuff. Bushido Blade. A simple enemy grunt can kill you easily, if you don't at least get used to either dodging or parrying.

The weird

• The English dubs are... ballsy. Japanese people have a thick Japanese accent, the Mongols have another thick accent on top of their Japanese accent (because the Mongols that actually talk to you speak Japanese with an accent), but most enemy soldiers speak languages I can't identify. It could be Korean, it could be some old Mongolian, and it could be both, considering the historic invasions of Tsushima in the 13th century.
• The samurai on Tsushima are quite idealised. They are true champions of their people and even the peasants think they're great. There is a lot of talk about honour meaning never to strike a foe into the back and the game makes it look like the samurai actually gave a rats ass about what happens to people. Maybe it's a Tsushima thing, maybe it's a fictional misrepresentation or maybe it's our dense protagonist and we'll see his rough awakening later in the game, as I've only played a couple of hours and spent most of that time exploring and not doing missions.
• The developer artificially increased the load times after dying, because the load times are so short, that people couldn't read the load screen tips.

The bad and the ugly

• During missions, there is an ugly "GET BACK TO THE MISSION AREA" with a 15 sec. countdown box popup, if you leave whatever the game thinks is the zone. Sometimes it even prevents you from going back and collecting loot. Considering how they managed to use wind as a tomtom, you'd expect something less... inelegant and brutish.
• Since it's a modern 3rd person game, your character is set off to one side of the screen. You can "shoulder swap" while aiming with a bow, but not during normal combat. This is a problem in this game, because this is a 50% stealth game and the offset to the left is so huge, that you're likely to never sneak around a building on the left.
• The combat is sometimes a bit floaty, because there is no real lock on mechanism. There is no way to tell the game, that you want to engage a specific enemy. This is fine and not a problem in most cases, but you'll constantly have to adjust the camera during fights with the right stick, while attacking and dodging with the face buttons. I'm suddenly a 100% more interested in one of these.
• The game sometimes misrepresents game mechanics in the skill descriptions. For example, you cannot parry spears, hammers and dual swords, only regular swords without the respective skills from the tree. You then "level up" and purchase the skills, just to find you still can't parry them. Turns out this is only for perfect parries (pressing the parry button with the right timing) instead of normal parries ("block" in other games).
• When you die (and that happens often), you have to watch a rather lengthy scene where your character still struggles and is then being finished off by the enemy. Considering how hard the combat is, you'll see that very often. It's similar to those lengthy death scenes in Resident Evil and Dead Space. I don't like those because I have nothing to do and nothing interesting happens, while I'm still pumped with adrenaline from the fight. It gets old very quickly. I guess it has something to do with those short loading times and they might have over compensated a lack of downtime.
• The game will sometimes give you a popup with a gameplay hint. I suspect it's like in the Halo series, that the game will annoy you with the same tip until you've executed the mechanic, but I've actually lost fights because of those tips. Imagine being surrounded by three dudes with swords, one with a sword and shield, one with a bow, one with dual swords and one guy with a spear. There is this popup (reducing visibility and breaking your attention) that tells you how much better the water stance is against shields. You swap to that stance to get rid of the popup and the spear guy kills you, because a) the stance sucks against spears and b) the spear guy was standing right were that popup was, so you didn't even know he's there.

 

[UniqTeas]

About HZD - The beginning of the game is good and the middle of the game is a little bland. But the end is where it all comes together. The story ends up being pretty good once you start unraveling the mysteries of what Horizon Zero Dawn is. I ended up Platinuming the game because I enjoyed it so much. But at the same time, I felt very lonely by the end of it. There is so much wild to explore with only menial interactions from NPCs. But the story does get better and real consequences start forming as a result after a while.

Plus, the hunting challenges in that game are AMAZING. I did them all except the super hard DLC one which was... YIKES.

 

[Springhosen]

So I found Alice Madness Returns, a game I wanted to play when it came out but never had the chance to, on the PSN store for PS3 for cheap and I bought it.

I never played the first Alice game and it came with Madness Returns for free so I started playing it first since it was the first one. I really like the atmosphere and the story but I gotta say, this game is hella glitchy and the controls for the console version, cannot speak to the computer version, are seriously screwed.

I would like to say I'm going to finish it, and to be honest I probably will, but I think I'm going to start Madness Returns before then.

I honestly don't know what I expected from a computer to console port but this game would greatly benefit from a loving remake that's actually for a console.