partious

Halo Infinite (PC)
Once by myself and again in co-op. I really liked it. I`ve only played Halo 1 and 2 on the original xbox in co-op and then a couple of years ago Halo 1 on MCC.
The grappling hook was an excellent addition. I really enjoyed the outdoor stuff. The indoor stuff was ok I guess, it was Halo. But yeah... the outdoor, open world aspect was by far the highlight for me. I loved the freedom you had in terms of how to approach the outdoor objectives.
I`ve seen a lot of people complain that this game was too short, but I can`t really get behind that complaint. I thought it was as long as I`d want such a game to be. I would have happily traded the last couple of indoor story missions for a bit more to do outdoors I guess.  Overall I really enjoyed it.

Streets of Rage 4 (Switch)
Feels a bit silly even mentioning a game like this in this thread, for a couple of reasons. It takes an hour or two to go through the game on normal difficulty and having done that there isn`t the slightest sense of closure or ticking the game off a backlog list that you get with story heavy games.

That said, if I don`t put it here I may as well just not post anything in this thread, since I see myself playing a lot more of this type of thing for the rest of 2023 and few/no AAA story games.
Anyway, I thought it was excellent. Gameplay felt like Streets of Rage 2 but slightly better. The music was good, if not as immediately catchy/memorable as the first couple of SOR games.
What is there to say really, without getting into the kind of superfluous waffle that modern game reviews are so prone to? It`s a scrolling beat em up. It`s a lot of fun, it has good music, it has very nice artwork. What more do you want?
A game I suspect I`ll still be replaying when I`ve completely forgotten about the AAA games I played in January.

Previously played

I played this on psplus and then went out and bought a physical copy, despite having nearly a year of plus extra remaining, just because it is so clearly a masterpiece that will be getting replayed for years and I don’t want to be dependent on a subscription to have access to it. I didn’t want the game to be associated with the subscription in my mind when I’m playing it  

Forbidden West is a nice addition for people who like that sort of thing. I’m currently suffering from a serious case of AAA open world fatigue so even the thought of playing it for 40-50 hours just makes me shudder.

The price of aaa open world stuff seems to drop like a rock after a year or two here, but stuff like Ratchet and Clank seems to be holding its value similar to Nintendo first party games.

I’d like to play Rift Apart and Sackboy but I just can’t bring myself to buy them at this stage, especially as the prices of both haven’t dropped much here. They must be coming to psplus soon, right??

On 10/02/2023 at 00:12, HarMGM said:

From what I've been hearing, a lot of PS5's are still going overseas and not getting into the hands of Japanese players. Hence you see the last two years where PS5 software has lagged behind the early years of the PS4 in terms of sales.

This definitely isn't true anymore, if it ever was.

In the past few weeks PS5 has gone from impossible to buy in Japan without jumping through a bunch of inconvenient hoops to basically easy to walk into any shop that sells games and buy one. Any Japanese person who wants a ps5 can walk into a shop today and buy one.

I've been seeing used PS5s at well below RRP in shops, which is a big sign that the shops feel the shortages are finished. 

Until now, the big chains would have sold them secondhand for exactly rrp and the indie game/retro shops at whatever scummy scalper price they thought someone might be willing to pay.

Meanwhile, I have never seen a series x in stock and MS are substantially increasing the price of the S and X in a few days

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/972660/view/3632752322771082194?l=english

Quote

Special mention to fans in countries where the price changes are more dramatic - Turkey and Argentina, especially: we see you and appreciate you, and apologize if these changes affect you negatively. 

What I can say is that we saw a huge increase in sales in your countries last year, but no increase in the number of players. Something like 85% of sales coming "from Argentina and Turkey" seem to be coming from people playing in other countries - people who are chasing the lowest possible price on Steam. This is apparently a widespread problem on Steam, which is why Steam is recommending an especially large increase in your regional prices. 

This is not an easy decision, but we do agree with it - the alternative is basically encouraging people to abuse the system and pay far less for our games than we know they're worth. Thanks very much for understanding.

I’m glad I got psplus extra. It’s helped me accept early in my ps5 ownership that the reason I didn’t play any of Sony’s many first party cinematic 3rd person/open world games on my ps4 wasn’t in fact because I didn’t own them, rather I didn’t own them because I find them extremely boring and they simply aren’t what I want from gaming.
Seemed to briefly forget that when I picked up a ps5 a few months ago. 
Then there are games like Returnal that are more my cup of tea but when I play them on extra I think “I need to buy this”.

I guess the ideal subscription game is just mediocre enough for me to play through it but not good enough for me to actually like it/want to own it. Zero replayability also a bonus.

I guess this “series s shit or not shit” tangent is sort of my fault for bringing it up so I should clarify. 
I have a ps5 and a gaming PC, so the series x doesn’t really appeal. The appeal of the series s is just that I like the small form factor, it’s relatively inexpensive (for the next 2 weeks), I recently paid for 3 years of game pass ultimate, I’d get an Xbox controller that I could also use with my pc. Finally, this is probably just an excuse/rationalization of a whim purchase, but with electricity price increases I started feeling a bit like running certain games on a gaming PC drawing what I think is probably 400-500 watts is probably a bit wasteful compared to a series s using 70 watts. Depends on the game and how much the graphics etc matter. That said, the purchase of the series s costs money too so like I said maybe I’m just looking for excuses to buy something.

The yen is bad compared to the dollar (but nowhere near as bad as it was a few months ago).

Realistically I think it’s basically them throwing in the towel on ever selling any here.

I’ve never even seen a series x on sale here, and the ps5 is pretty easy to find recently.

I’d never recommend a series s over a digital ps5, especially if the price difference is only around 10000 yen.

Myself and a few other westerners living in Japan will be annoyed by the price increase I guess. 

Hmmm....

Microsoft announced a couple of days ago that they're increasing the price of both consoles in Japan by 5000 yen in the middle of February.

I'd been slowly mulling over getting a series s but wasnt in a hurry and I guess this is forcing me to choose, because I certainly won't buy one after the increase. 

I currently have game pass and a gaming PC, but no xbox. 

I recently put down Like a Dragon after 20+ hours when I realized there was going to be a bunch of tedium/grind involved in getting to the end. Choosing the jrpg style one was a big mistake in hindsight, since I have a low tolerance for grind and such. I just don't have enough gaming time to enjoy such stuff. The sheer number of games in the main series pushed me towards LAD though.

I was enjoying the nonsense story and wouldn't mind playing some of the other games, but reading a bit about zero (the one people always recommend starting with) people keep mentioning grinding various side activities/mini games and I get the impression it's necessary. Is this stuff actually necessary to smoothly go through the main story. For example, are there points where the game says something like "I need 10 million yen to do such and such" to force you to grind out money in some minigame?

To be honest, I'd be happy enough to play through on easy and enjoy the story and a few side missions, watch cut scenes, run from place to place with some button mashing in between, but if the side stuff is required I won't bother. I'm sure they're fun if you're in the mood but I have zero interest in anything like the stock market waste of time from LAD.

I completed Ishin back at the ps4 launch and don't remember anything particularly tedious/grindy aside from the high number of random fights when running down the street and vague memories of an optional slightly musou style dungeon minigame (it was a long time ago).

If I didn't have memories of Ishin being at least somewhat respectful of player time, I'd dismiss the entire series as not for me after my LAD experience (there is so much bloat,drudgery and tedium in that game it's close to the opposite of my gaming preferences). Where does zero fall in that regard?

I’m quite enjoying this. Like others have said, it feels like a Dreamcast game. The movement is rather floaty and my immediate reaction was to wish the running around was faster/heavier feeling, but the combat is fun and it has a nice atmosphere.

It’s nice to get to play through a game before the experts tell everyone what their opinion of it should be and people start parroting that.

It will be interesting to compare the reactions from the early pages of this thread to the consensus in a few months/a year.

3 minutes ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

I can't check on PC, but in my game pass app on my mobile Crackdown 3 is there when I filter for PC games.

Thanks. That’s annoying. I know it didn’t review well but it was one of the games I’d been looking forward to trying. 

Is Crackdown 3 on pc gamepass? It’s only available to stream for me, not to download on pc. Just wondering if it’s some Japan nonsense or if it’s the same elsewhere.

It's worse than that. Like A Dragon has no difficulty settings either before you start or during the playthrough (I think there's a hard mode after you complete the game).

32 minutes ago, Jamie John said:

@partious

 

I've had my eye on LaD for a while, but your post has convinced me not to bother with it - I just can't be done anymore with putting that much time into a game when the gameplay isn't there to see you through, no matter how good the story or endearing the characters.

 

I'll be interested to hear how you get on with Judgement as that always seemed a little less sprawling than the other Yakuza games. I played an enjoyed Zero, but even that felt like it went on for too long.

I'm sure there are plenty of people on the forum who would pick apart my post and refute the idea that Like a Dragon is a tedious experience, so it probably largely depends on your level of tolerance for jrpg systems. I fear mine is quite low even when I go into a game with the best of intentions (like I did here).

I beat FF7 Remake recently so that might have given me some false confidence, but that isn't even turn based and also lets you lower the difficulty if you've had your fill .

I should have gone with my gut and chosen Judgment based on the howlongtobeat times alone. I find 25 hours to be doable in almost all cases, 30+ to usually end up testing my patience and I'm not sure I've ever beaten a 50+ hour story type game, but I've certainly bounced off plenty. I completed Ishin on ps4 and didn't think it was boring/tedious so I suspect I'll get on with Judgment. I'm going to put a couple of non-yakuza games between now and when I start it though.

I`m reluctant to post here because you never know when you`ll come back to something (I finally dragged myself past the finish line in GTA5 a couple of weeks ago, etc). Also I know this is a popular series/game around here, so forgive me. But anyway, for now.

Yakuza: Like A Dragon

Like a lot of abandoned playthroughs of highly regarded games, I really have nobody but myself to blame. I don`t have a good track record with JRPGs, but I found the setting etc of this one appealing.

I`m a little over 20 hours into this and I`m starting to think I might be better served by watching the rest of the cutscenes etc on youtube than grinding through the rest of the game. I was enjoying the game at first but if I`m not currently at the "that`s enough of that" stage, I`m getting there, and howlongtobeat.com leads me to believe that at best I have 30 hours left just to finish the main story (and probably more since HLTB estimates are usually on the low side....).

My own fault really for thinking a Yakuza skinned JRPG might not suffer from the same issues as other JRPGs, or more precisely that the Yakuza story and setting would offset them enough that I wouldn`t run out of steam halfway through.
There`s an interesting story told through cutscenes and then a "game" of stat management and busywork scaffolded around those cutscenes.  

Mindlessly grinding to level up (I know there's plenty of grinding coming in the second half having watched a couple of reviews last night to hear opinions as my own interest starts waning) might not even feel particularly disagreeable after a day at work, but is that type of experience really what I want from games, from my free time, from a pastime, etc?

Chapter 6 in particular was some of the most tedious gameplay I've experienced in quite a while.

I have PSPlus Extra, I have Game Pass. I have Steam, Epic, Prime Gaming, etc etc etc.

There are far too many games I`m actually excited about playing to stay working my way through what is essentially a 50 hour long chore list of tedium with good cutscenes.

Dear JRPG developers, put difficulty settings in your games. I`d happily turn down the difficulty to easy and walk through the rest of the story if that option existed, in fact I`d find that greatly preferable to watching it on youtube. I like everything about this game aside from the gameplay. I`m as invested in the story/characters/setting etc as I was at the start, I just can`t stomach the drudgery of repetitive random battles to make a bunch of arbitrary numbers go up so that the characters (not the player) gain skill and can progress the story.

Also, if an "autopilot" button for your game`s combat seems like a good idea, and the majority of your game`s gameplay involves combat, you`ve probably messed up somewhere.

It was a toss up for me between playing this and Judgment and I went with this, a mistake in hindsight. I think I should give up on this while I still have the stomach to try Judgment and before I burn out on the whole series. I completed Ishin back at the PS4 launch and I really enjoyed it, but I guess this turn based jrpg style isn't for me.

5) Guardians of The Galaxy (PS5)

I`m not a marvel fan and have never seen any of the GOTG movies. I`d also never even heard of this game until recently when I noticed a couple of people refer to it as "better than you probably expect" and "nothing like the avengers game" (which I had heard was bad and full of microtransactions). Anyway it`s on PSPLUS and is a PS5 game so I decided to give it a shot.

For me this game far surpassed the "better than you`d expect" faint praise I`d read. I think I’d say it’s the most fun I’ve had with a game in a while. 

I like the constant banter between the characters, the graphics are very nice, some of the jokes are actually amusing (which is unusual for a game), and the experience feels fairly tight. I appreciate the lack of open world bloat or other padding they could have forced on the player but didn`t. I’ve read complaints from people that this game “only” takes 16 hours or whatever, and I really can’t relate to that. The length of the game felt generous for the type of non-padded story experience it was. Anything longer would have been detrimental to the experience.

As I said, I know nothing about GOTG but I think that lack of familiarity may have been a good thing for me. It`s just a fun space story that doesn`t take itself too seriously with a bunch of interesting teammates. The setup lends itself well to an enjoyable videogame.

I actually quite like the combat. I`m not saying it`s anything amazing but it`s more entertaining to me than the combat in most big budget games I`ve played in the past few years.

This is pretty much the first psplus game that I`ve played recently that I would have been happy to have bought at a non heavily discounted price.

Previous Games

24 minutes ago, dreamylittledream said:

Only if it’s a cross play game. Some are and some sadly are not.

Thanks, I wasn’t sure if cross play applied to cloud saves. 

Got 3 years of this last night using the gold conversion method. 
I don’t have an Xbox console but I do have a decent gaming pc. I got this mainly for the streaming stuff and having played 3 hours of Like A Dragon last night, I’m very impressed.  I had considered buying a steam deck, but since I’d only use one at home anyway, I think this is more than good enough for my needs.
 

I already have a ps5 and psplus extra which means I already had access to Like A Dragon, but there’s a difference between finding the time to sit at the ps5 in a separate room and play through a game of that length and being able to play through it on on a phone/iPad while others watch tv etc.

With game pass and psplus extra, it really does feel like we’re in a golden age at least in terms of access to good games at the moment. 
 

I didn’t have much luck finding an answer to this with a quick google search but if I play via cloud and also have the game downloaded on pc game pass, can I alternate between the two with the same save file? I’d assume it’s possible with the series consoles, but maybe not with PC?

I`ve been playing through this the past few evenings on PS5. I`m not a marvel fan and have never seen any of the GOTG movies. I`d also never even heard of this game until recently when I noticed a couple of people refer to it as "better than you probably expect" and "nothing like the avengers game" (which I had heard was bad and full of microtransactions). Anyway it`s on PSPLUS and is a PS5 game so I decided to give it a shot.

I just finished chapter 10 and for me this game has far surpassed the "better than you`d expect" faint praise I`d read. I`m really enjoying it. I`ve actually played quite a few games recently, and this is my favourite of them.

I like the constant banter between the characters, the graphics are very nice, some of the jokes are actually amusing (which is unusual for a game), and the experience feels fairly tight. I appreciate the lack of open world bloat or other padding they could have forced on the player but didn`t.

As I said, I know nothing about GOTG but I think that lack of familiarity has actually been a good thing for me. It`s just a fun space story that doesn`t take itself too seriously with a bunch of fairly interesting teammates. The setup lends itself well to an enjoyable videogame.

I actually quite like the combat. I`m not saying it`s anything amazing but it`s more entertaining to me than the combat in most big budget games I`ve played in the past few years.

This is pretty much the first psplus game that I`ve played recently that I would have been happy to actually pay money for.

One gripe, if I may. I HATE that pressing both analogue sticks together triggers "photo mode". I end up in photo mode way too often in the middle of a battle since you have to run around constantly and also have to press at least the left stick regularly. It`s too easy to accidentally end up in photo mode and I can`t find a way to turn it off, unlike in some other games. It's infuriating every time it happens.

I wish there was a console level setting to automatically disable all photo modes. I will never want to take a "photo" in a game.

Combination of time off work over the new year and games that I'd started in 2022 going on for these first few.

1) Spider-man: Miles Morales (PS5)

I haven't played the main Spider-Man game, but I enjoyed this. Nice graphics and decent enough gameplay as far as open world games go. It really benefitted from being rather short, as that meant the gameplay and kids TV show quality story didn't outstay their welcome. 

The open world itself was fairly hollow and I just flew above it between missions (I tried walking around to see if I was missing anything interesting, but I didn't seem to be).

2) Ghost of Tsushima (PS5)

I flip flopped on my opinion of this a couple of times during my playthrough. Started off being impressed with the graphics and environment etc, about 10 hours in I felt burned out on the repetitive loop and considered abandoning it, but then after taking a break for a day I went back to it and something about it clicked and I really enjoyed going through the rest of the missions. I found it quite relaxing, and the environments are quite beautiful. I fast traveled a lot towards the end though.

3) GTA5 (PC)

I'd played most of this in 2022 (having never played more than the first few hours before that), but burned out at some stage like I have with so many other open world games over the years. Decided to go back to it between other games during my time off work over the new year. Turns out I had about 12 hours left but it felt longer.

Some of the stuff this game makes you do even in main missions is just utterly boring.

Hated Trevor and most of the plot, although some of the dialogue between characters was enjoyable. Hate the massively restricted missions where you instadie if you deviate slightly from what the designers want you to do. Was all worth it for the satisfaction of finishing the game and uninstalling it from my PC.

4) FF7 Remake (PS5)

I made a post in the game's thread talking about the shallow game design. It's basically walk down a corridor for 30 hours solving trivial environmental puzzles and fighting enemies it would be impossible to lose against. The boss battles are the only part of the gameplay that doesn't feel like total filler content or a stalling tactic.

Most of what happens as you walk along the corridor from one cutscene to the next just feels like uninspired nothing content that only exists to make the game at least twice as long as it should be.

Still though, I think I enjoyed it overall even though I don't respect the unambitious approach to gameplay design that they settled on. I doubt I'll be back for future installments (until they come to psplus anyway..).

On 07/01/2023 at 14:48, Unofficial Who said:

 

And the hollowness you spoke of? Did you enjoy....

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

To be honest, I didn't notice that, I was just happy it was over 

I finished this last night. Nothing much to add to what I posted above. The story made less and less sense as it approached the end, which is an impressive feat I suppose. I quite enjoyed that it seemed to just progressively up the level of nonsense with each cutscene towards the end.

It's funny, I could go on and on about issues with every part of the game (like I did in my post above) but having completed it my feeling is ”I quite enjoyed that", so it did something right. Obviously it got a massive helping hand because of nostalgia and the ability to reuse classic music etc. 

Despite having enjoyed the game, I really feel no excitement about the upcoming installments. That's not to say I won't play the next one if/when it comes to psplus but I feel like most of my nostalgia for ff7 has already been covered by this game (a large part was already satisfied after the first chapter). 

Also this game was definitely stretched to at least twice as long as the plot/content warranted.

I sort of regret posting that now... Reading it again it comes off as a lot more miserable than I'd intended.

Currently playing this on PS5. I’m at chapter 14 and I’m enjoying it, which you might find hard to believe by the end of this post… The music is great, the graphics are impressive and it runs nice and smooth. The gameplay fundamentals are well done, the combat feels satisfying and even just running around feels satisfying compared to other games’ implementation of running.

That said, I can’t help but feel there’s a cynicism/laziness to the actual design of the gameplay experience resting on top of those well made fundamentals, amazing music and great graphics.

The entire game is basically “walk down this corridor”, and along the way you must work your way through a succession of obstacles that lack any sort of challenge either mentally or mechanically.

Climbing ladders, fighting low level enemies, doing some brain dead “puzzle”, the random appearance of a boss, climb under some rocks, more ladders, oh no the floor collapsed yet again, let’s  climb more ladders and fight more low level enemies it would be basically impossible to be beaten by.

It feels like a game comprised almost entirely of dopamine releasing filler/padding, as if all the enthusiasm the creators had was for the story and spectacle and the gameplay was just added afterwards to hang cutscenes off and make the game last 30 hours instead of 10.
 

You can “explore” by taking the wrong turn when the corridor forks, this will lead to running about 15 metres until you hit a dead end. Then you run back 15m and take the correct path down the corridor.

So, this all sounds like I hate the game, but as I said at the start, I’m enjoying it!

I guess it’s possible to enjoy a game while simultaneously noticing that its gameplay is totally comprised of repetitive and uninspiring dopamine releasing tasks. 
 

It keeps the player entertained on a moment to moment basis, but there’s a hollowness to the whole experience that makes it hard to respect what the designers have made, even if they’ve succeeded in making a game that isn’t boring.