[GreenBow]

Started play Dark Souls 3, and I died. lol Not the friendliest game in terms of having the user easily get into the game. I've looked around to see what's the essential things to know in order to get decent at this game, and the most important thing is acknowledging that the act of rolling for dodging causes invincibility for the short duration of the roll (in which I think is ghey). Anyway, I have no interest in continuing this game. Don't see the appeal of continuously dying. lol

Dark Souls 3 puts a boss just 5 to 10 mins into the game from the start. Some big dude that you pull a sword out of and he comes to life.

That boss did the same to me and I just kept dying to it. I gave up. Then tried again another day, then gave up. After watching Youtube and seeing other people beat this boss easier than myself, who had played DS1 and DS2. I tried again, and finally beat the boss.

I think however it might have been watching others play that helped me beat that boss. Much more them making me give it another go, I mean. Like I think I had given up trying to block with shield, and had ended up relying on evasion. I think the more balanced approach to play, was what beat the boss, and the less balanced - why I failed.

I suppose starting again after dying with enemies revived, is a chance to practice blocking and rolling.

 

[oqvist]

Death Stranding. What a brilliant game Kojima is matching MGS IV with ease here. I have some reservations the vehicles feels like a total cheat. I don´t have to use them but then I get lower scores because I am not as fast despite the challenge is way harder! Much harder to deliver undamaged cargo as well and I need to care less for each mission.. It just destroy the game balance completly.

I can see myself loosing a lot of time here. I borrowed the game from the library so am playing on PS 4 Pro. Not sure 2 weeks is enough to finish it wonder if you can import games from PS 4 and play on PC?

 

[SilverEars]

Death Stranding. What a brilliant game Kojima is matching MGS IV with ease here. I have some reservations the vehicles feels like a total cheat. I don´t have to use them but then I get lower scores because I am not as fast despite the challenge is way harder! Much harder to deliver undamaged cargo as well and I need to care less for each mission.. It just destroy the game balance completly.

I can see myself loosing a lot of time here. I borrowed the game from the library so am playing on PS 4 Pro. Not sure 2 weeks is enough to finish it wonder if you can import games from PS 4 and play on PC?

Did you borrow the game from the public library? I didn't know you could do that?

Dark Souls 3 puts a boss just 5 to 10 mins into the game from the start. Some big dude that you pull a sword out of and he comes to life.

That boss did the same to me and I just kept dying to it. I gave up. Then tried again another day, then gave up. After watching Youtube and seeing other people beat this boss easier than myself, who had played DS1 and DS2. I tried again, and finally beat the boss.

I think however it might have been watching others play that helped me beat that boss. Much more them making me give it another go, I mean. Like I think I had given up trying to block with shield, and had ended up relying on evasion. I think the more balanced approach to play, was what beat the boss, and the less balanced - why I failed.

I suppose starting again after dying with enemies revived, is a chance to practice blocking and rolling.

Yeah, it's a real shame. It's like the developer has no people skills, and autistic. Definitely not a Miyamoto, who actually seems to understand people.

 

[faolan]

Been playing Hades from Supergiant - scratches the Diablo 3 grindfest itch, but the story is baked into the grinding mechanics. Music and art are awesome, as is customary for Supergiant Games. Still running a backlog of Horizon: Zero Dawn and Disco Elysium, which are also really pretty, but you can just have some mindless fun for 30 minutes and make some meaningful progress in Hades, y'know?

 

[Kukuk]

I've been playing a fair bit of Wolfenstein: Youngblood lately. Not a game I'd ever buy, but it's free on Xbox game pass, so I figured I'd try it out. I'm not sure I've ever played a Wolfenstein game, maybe the original when I was younger, so this is kinda a weird place to jump in.

Keep in mind that this comes from a person with a high tolerance for stupid, juvenile, obnoxious humor, (that was me as a kid) so your perception of the game may be vastly different from mine, but I really like it. I find it extremely rare for an FPS (Or rather, an arcadey FPS) to have stealth, and it's even rarer that stealth be a viable gameplay option. Usually if an FPS has stealth, it's solely to get the drop on enemies to slightly disadvantage the horde; with this you can actually clear levels with it (aside from bosses). I don't solely play in stealth mode though, I like to mix it up by maybe clearing one room with stealth, the next with run and gun, etc. And the tools it gives you to run-and-gun are pretty satisfying; the guns generally have a great feel, the running and sliding is a lot of fun, double jumps, ground slams, etc, etc all give you a lot of ways to clear rooms.

If I had to nit-pick it, it's somewhat formulaic in that you're treading a lot of the same ground as you work through the game. Each area has multiple missions to complete, but you don't get them all at once; you'll pick them up as you work through the story. It's basically a convenient excuse to have you replay levels. Not a deal breaker, but I kind of wish there were more areas to explore.

A lot of people take issue with the two protagonists being annoying, and I can see it. It doesn't really bother me; I can kinda understand them being obnoxious since they're teenagers, and all teenagers are stupid, so I can give them a pass.

I dunno if it was a $60 game when it came out, I sure hope not, but if it were a $40 I could see buying it if I didn't get it for free. It's a solid 8/10, stupid-fun FPS.

Oh, I'll also say that the implementation of Ray Tracing is super impressive. It's oddly satisfying seeing proper reflections.

 

[oqvist]

Did you borrow the game from the public library? I didn't know you could do that?

Yeah, it's a real shame. It's like the developer has no people skills, and autistic. Definitely not a Miyamoto, who actually seems to understand people.

Yes over here the libraries can buy licenses for games just the same as for books movies or music

 

[Kukuk]

I'm playing Fallout 76 again. I played it when it first came out, despite the reviews being so poor, because I figured the reviewers were just morons (although in fairness, most game reviewers are morons). I guess I liked it more than the reviewers, but I couldn't really get into it like Fallout 4. I ran into a lot of issues with gameplay that really sapped my enjoyment of the game; most notably the combat balancing. You'd do so little damage, particularly around level 20ish, that it took probably a dozen magazines just to kill something like a super mutant. I remember it taking so long to kill a single enemy that by the time you finished your second enemy, the first would have respawned. No doubt the idea at the time was to encourage group play, but it made solo play basically impossible.

Fast forward to now, and a lot of updates have rolled out in my absence. I feel like all the small stuff tweaked in the game have made it worth playing. Such little things really added up for a transformative effect, most notably in the combat scaling. Enemies are still a little bullet-spongy, but are much more manageable now. Resource management is less restrictive now; it seemed like before you had to pick whether you wanted to build up your camp or keep your weapons and armor repaired. It was a really frustrating balancing act of managing your building materials.

If there's one point of frustration for me, it's the fickle nature of the aged game engine. They've really tacked on a lot to an already overtaxed engine, one with roots spanning back multiple console generations, and it's really starting to show. Performance really isn't where it should be, considering how the graphics looks (they aren't bad, but they aren't up to the best games out there). There's also weird quirks that I run into that I just don't really understand. If I run the game on my laptop in borderless windowed mode, I get about 25FPS. If I switch to fullscreen I'm getting well above 60FPS. However, if I play the game in fullscreen mode, on whatever system I play it on, I get regular crashing every 5-10 minutes. So playing it on my desktop in borderless mode is my only option for a playable framerate.

If you can get past the technical issues, there's a good game underneath. It's kinda gotten the No Man's Sky treatment, and It's really nice to see. I think I'd give it an 8/10.

 

[SilverEars]

Not currently playing, but finished Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2).

I've never been much of a fan of Rockstar games. GTA, etc.. I recall when GTA 3 first came out, and wasn't all that impressed with it.

Same thing I was afraid of RDR2, and I had some bias against the game before playing. Intially, the game did seem quite slow, and didn't seem all that engaging. I didn't think there was anything really innovative about an open world and adding much stuff for simulation sake. It creates a algorithmized world, but still a dull world.

I found the gameplay to be nothing innovative. They'd have option to hunt for food and cook the food for example, but the game didn't really require it. Same for all the money I was gaining.

The gameplay was cliche, which was something I've tend to expect of RockStar world. You are part of a gang, and the story consists of repeatedly going out to collect/rob for money, and it turns into a shootout, and you escape.

I got really tired of riding horses over and over again.

The gameplay mechanics is at least what I expect as there isn't distinctive mechanics particular to the game. It's just shooting like Call of Duty or whatever. There's not deep mechanics you'd find in games like The Last of US, or much intelligence to enemy AI. Just simple shooting mechnics.

The saving grace of was the game was when the story took off around chapter 3, and I got engrossed into the game's story.

Even though the gameplay seems bla, I got the give credit where it's due. The world created was really complex and deep. I think the simulated world took a lot of work to create. There's no game that went to the extent of this game in creating a simulated world.

I will also admit that world that was created was really breath taking looking. It looked straight out of Yellow Stone national park. Or the cities, the detailed in the way the building were created, lots of details.

After awhile, I found the main protagonist (Arthur) quite interesting of a character. This game got me interested in Westerns.

 

[Hawk600us]

Insurgency Sandstorm (pc) 8/10 - great FPS with excellent positional audio to tes our headphones

 

[mantsm]

Just Cause 4. Would say 6/10. Really loved the previous one and thought it's awesome when you want to quickly just destroy something in the game, but the new one seems to be too serious and not so much fun.

 

[SilverEars]

Just recently finished the 2019 COD: Modern Warfare.

What I like about the Modern Warfare series is the how how realistic the military gear they respresent (military vehicles, weapons). I also like how it's presented in a way to make you feel like you are part of the squad, and it feels like how actions you see on the news, TV movies likes Black Hawk Down, or 0 Dark Thirty.

The visual presentation with this one was superb, some of the scenes with you going in as part of the squad of solders seemed so realistic. The rendering of details and lighting made the look so realistic.

One of the scenarios I was playing was breaching a middle Eastern home, and it's obviously taken inspiration from story of finding Osama Bin Laden. When you turn on the night vision goggles, and walking through home and clearing the rooms, it feels quite authentic to military spec op experience.

Going through mission with Bradly Fighting Vehicles nearby is cool as well.

Just look at how realistic it looks and feels.


Ok, now to the cons. Modern Warfare franchise has been around for along time, and the gameplay hasn't changed much. It's just mainly a third person shooter without much depth to the gameplay. It's quite linear how it's setup, so replayability is pretty much nil. Once you play it, you already know the linear sequence. There is no unpredictability of the gameplay for replay value. However, I did enjoy the game for experiencing a movie like experience, but in first person. I think it's cool to experience military spec op missions.

I generally like the single play campaigns, and the campaign in this game is quite short, about 5 hrs. I wish it was more extended with more depth to the gameplay. I like how they built up the scenarios for the missions, although too linear, being predetermined plotting.

I find captain price's boonie really cool lookin. lol I don't know if it's typical SAS way of molding the boonie.

 

[SilverEars]

Korean Navy Seal plays Modern Warfare. His feedback will provide how realistic it is. Turn on English subtitles.

 

[judson_w]

Picked up a few games on Switch recently on sale:

Katamari Damacy Reroll - I had seen it around a lot, it is not a new game, but I like the basic idea of the game. If you are not familiar with the game, the basic premise is you are a small alien prince pushing a ball around that picks up things smaller than it that it hits. Through this process your ball gets bigger, allowing you to pick up bigger things. Eventually the ball gets big enough that it can pick up people, cars, trees, and houses. Most levels have a size goal and a time limit.

I am not approaching it in a completionist mindset, which I think helps with my enjoyment, but if someone wants to grind and get the 100% there is a lot of potential there too I think. A decent amount of the game is figuring out the best path you should follow.

For example, there is an early level where you start off on a table with stuff you can pick up. You can also go off the table and get other things and then go outside for access to larger things. My first couple attempts, I was hasty to get off the table and go outside and I struggled a lot because I was not big enough to pick up enough things. On the last run I did, I picked up everything on the table and thus was large enough off of the table to pick up more things that I had no trouble exceeding the size requirement for the level.

The music is distinctive but I enjoy it. The King of All Cosmos can be quite the jerk if you fail badly enough, but not enough to stop me from trying levels again. The story is a bit absurd and surreal, but I like it. I have not beaten it yet, but I would say 7/10

GRIS - Another not new game, but I have had my eye on it for awhile. Basic premise, from my understanding, is a girl is wandering in her own world and processing grief and pain from something that happened. As you explore, you find and unlock colors, adding color the world and giving her different abilities.

Just started last night, and I really like the art and music style. Gameplay so far is not too challenging, which is fine. It is a platformer and I am sure that once I have unlocked more colors and abilities the challenges will become more intricate (presently I can only jump and turn myself into a heavy block to smash through some things or avoid being blown away by heavy wind).

The world feels expansive to me so far. There are definitely times when things are limited in where you can go by virtue of it being a platformer, but there feels like there is some choice in direction. Or maybe there were times when I made the right choice the first time and nothing would have happened if I went the other direction. In those cases, my choice often sent me to another area with no way to double back and check. While I would like to have gone back and checked, I do like the impression that choices matter but also that there are not wrong choices. I am still able to move forward.

Movement feels great and the sound design has been a delight (I was using my sennheiser HD600 headphones plugged into the Switch; not the best source, perhaps, but still a pleasant sound). In these early stages, I would say 8/10.

VA-11 HALL-A - This is touted as an indie cyberpunk bartender simulation, but it also is heavily a visual novel. You play as Jill Stingray, a bartender in a hole in the wall bar, VA-11 HALL-A, in a dystopian cyberpunk city called Glitch City. If you are expecting a lot of action and excitement or choice, this is not the game for you. Your choices are limited to what drinks you make for customers, what songs you queue up on the jukebox, and how you spend your money outside of work.

When you are at work, customers will come up, ask for a drink, and generally share some aspect of their story. Whether you make the right drink for them or not can affect their reactions and their tipping. When making drinks, there is no time limit and you have a recipe book. If you screw up making a drink, it will let you know and you can try again.

The characters are what make this game, in my opinion. There are a variety of personalities and overlapping storylines. Listening to one person's tale might give insight into another's, seeing your character develop in the interactions with others, it is all well written and executed. There are multiple endings and so there is NG+ for attempting those. I have not yet attempted a NG+, partially because I really liked the ending I got, but I will probably give it another go soon to see how much is different between the original run and the new run. 7.5/10 if you like visual novels and reading. 4/10 if you do not.

 

[judson_w]

A follow up on Gris. It is a short game, maybe a handful of hours. As such, I would say keep that in mind when looking at the cost. Generally this game is not sold for a lot so that helps, but some may prefer to get it on sale (presently it is 60% off on Steam, and also pretty well discounted on Switch). Even with the relative shortness of the game, I would put it at an 8/10. The visuals are wonderful as well as the sound design. It is an interesting and moving representation of grief and pain being processed.

 

[renanrischiotto]

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