partious

 I’d go with PS1. Good mix of classic 3d and 2d arcade ports with a lot of replayability and a massive library of interesting "hidden gems”, experimental stuff and niche games so you’d still be finding interesting games you’d never heard of for a very long time.

For me the most obvious and unwelcome example of that is open world racing games where you have to drive across a map to get to the next race/event instead of just selecting it from a menu screen.

12 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

I'm finding that DLC versions additions for some open world games can provide much tighter experiences.

 

Minerva's Den for instance is such tight tidy slice of Bioshock, all the thrills of Bioshock 2 with none of the bloat.

 

I'm also finding Spiderman:Miles Morales to be free of a lot of the "filler" material that seemed to be in the mainline title.

 

Both AAA experiences that wouldn't exist without the main game to support it but I think more games could do with tighter abridged versions of their experience.

 

I think the open world game that cured me of trying to 100% everything was Just Cause 2, one of the largest games I've ever played.

 

While we're on it most open world games need a "last time on...." feature.

Actually, Miles Morales was the game I played before I started Ghost of Tsushima and I thought it was the perfect length, so I agree! I liked Miles Morales but I’m not sure I’m interested in playing the main Spider-Man game because of the length compared to MM.

The abridged version idea is something I’ve thought about before and I agree it would be excellent, especially in this era of psplus extra and game pass. Give me a 15 hour version of these 30 hour long games. 

I’m currently playing through Ghost Of Tsushima on PS5 and at about 12 hours in I’m starting to experience the thing that I experience with nearly every open world game, after I notice the gameplay loop and the repetition becomes clear. 

Basically for the first 10 hours the setting etc is new and exciting but then you start to notice you’ve actually just done basically the same thing 10 times (watch cutscene, clear a settlement of enemies, watch cutscene in the case of GOT). You then realize that there are 20 hours left and those 20 hours are going to involve just doing the same thing 20 more times and… the game has morphed from feeling fun and unknown into being a bit of a chore while you think of the game you’ll play after you finish this one. 
 

As you can probably guess I don’t complete many AAA open world games, but I’ve played and enjoyed the first 10-15 hours of a lot of them!

Just wondering if this is common. 
Do open world games usually hold your interest/keep you motivated until the end or is there a point where you experience what I’ve mentioned above? Do you find some games are better played in chunks with something else in between? Do you just move on to something new when a game gets repetitive or do you try to see it though to the end.

This isn’t an “I don’t like games anymore” thread or a “tell me I should play indie games” thread. I really do enjoy the first 10-15 hours of a lot of AAA open world games but then my interest nosedives.

I got a year of PSPlus Extra cheap recently having finally bought a ps5 in November and all I can say is I'm really glad I lost all interest in my ps4 about 5 years ago because of how poorly games performed on it after I got used to 60fps on PC. For someone in this position, I think psplus extra is currently a lot more enticing than Xbox game pass, which has surprised me after reading “best value in gaming” repeatedly about game pass but almost nothing about the PlayStation equivalent.

Played through Miles Morales which was fun and didn't outstay its welcome and currently playing Ghost Of Tsushima which has really clicked in a way open world stuff rarely does for me. 

I'm not sure if this comes across as either elitist or casual but I would have been fairly dismissive of the prospect of playing either of those games if they were on PS4 with lower resolutions and 30fps. The 30fps thing mainly. For the past few years I just haven't bothered with console AAA stuff because something about 30fps just made them feel sluggish and, for lack of a better way to explain it, they just didn't really feel fun to play as a result of that sluggishness/latency.

It sort of reinforced a "modern games have boring gameplay" opinion that I started developing over the past few years.

Anyway, playing something like Ghost of Tsushima on ps5 is a revelation, everything is silky smooth and responsive. It just adds so much to the experience. Also, I think I have to admit I'm a sucker for shiny graphics. The combination of that smooth 60fps and the shiny graphics just has a wow factor that PS4 basically never had for me. I got a ps4 at launch and the jump from ps3 wasn't particularly impressive at the time and the norm being 30fps felt rubbish right from the start. 

I'm genuinely looking forward to playing a bunch of games that I've had zero interest in for the past few years thanks to the new hardware. I feel like this is the gen when HD console gaming has finally matured, no more gameplay ruining 30fps (or worse) performance (unless you choose it) and graphics that are consistently stunning to look at. 

I finished this a couple of days ago. I haven’t played the Spider-man game, but recently got a year of psplus extra in the sale and this is the ps5 version whereas Spider-Man isn’t, so I went with this. 

Overall, I liked it. Fun gameplay and didn’t outstay its welcome, which is extremely rare for a big budget game these days.

I played for an hour or two on the high graphics setting then switched to performance. Yet another experience that makes it 100% crystal clear that 60fps is massively more important than graphics. 

I sort of feel like the open world was largely wasted, but I guess that might be somewhat unavoidable when you’re playing as Spider-Man. There’s a big open world New York , but I just zipped above it from one place to the next and don’t really feel like I experienced much in terms of the world. Any time I tried running around the streets etc, it didn’t seem very interesting.

Anyway, I’m grateful that this game was about 10 hours long, and not padded out to 30. I wish there were more AAA games of a similar length to play on psplus etc, instead of the many games that insist on dragging a similar level of children’s tv show quality story out for 35 hours+.

Dark Souls/Bloodborne etc: should have difficulty options/easy mode  😉

5 hours ago, Down by Law said:

 

I'm on about Pokemon Scarlet, but i'm sure you knew that already. Actually I dont even know anymore. I am tired of this thread. Arguing with the same few people who never had any intention of ever buying it telling those of us who actually did that were wrong for enjoying it. In any other thread, that would be trolling. I've said my piece on this game, and got 33 hours of enjoyment out of it. The comments from others in here who actually played it, are all mostly positive. So make of that what you will, and i'll leave dekay to do his hilarious, rib-achingly funny thread edits. 🤭

The thread title edits and constant shitposting from the OP of this thread are clearly childish trolling, which I guess is acceptable because this is a Sonic game thread and it’s cool for one member to get their fun from deliberately irritating other members. 
@deKay why do you persist with your unfunny title edits and unfunny shitposting when the response to it in this thread seems overwhelmingly negative? Is it just to entertain yourself because you know it’s irritating other users (ie, trolling)?

27 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Do you remember when BOTW wasn’t out yet though and Edge gave it a 10? I remember a lot people sitting up and taking notice, suddenly everyone wanted a Switch.

Not really. They gave Twilight Princess 9 and Skyward Sword 10. What were people expecting?

I'm sure the recent 10 for Immortality brought some attention to that game though. 

The era of people using magazine reviews as a buyer's guide for mainstream games is long gone. I doubt many people were sitting around waiting for the Edge GOW review before buying a game that came out weeks ago.

7 for GOW seems plausible even for a fan of the genre, and arguing that a 7 should have been an 8 is a bit petty. Extreme stuff like 3 for Sonic looks like they chose one of the many reviewers with a preexisting bias against 3D Sonic games to review this one with predictable results.

The best review of basically every 3D Sonic game apart from 06 and Boom is "you`ll enjoy this if you like 3D Sonic games".

5 minutes ago, therearerules said:

No, what about it?

Double Dash is better

The people who roll into Edge threads with sarcastic posts looking down on the idea of review scores being a topic of discussion on a gaming forum are as predictable as the complaints about review scores.  

Has anyone mentioned the Immortality 10 yet?

Only problem with Steam Deck for switch games is that without an actual switch he won't be able to create backups of his legitimately purchased switch games like all other steam deck owners do. 

I have VR but not a Steam Deck, but the Steam Deck still seems like the more practical option that you'll get more use out of.

I never had any nausea playing through Alyx and am generally ok with VR but the HL2 mod turned my stomach after about 30 minutes, same as the quest HL1 mod and every other VR mod of a non-vr fps.

5 minutes ago, choddo said:

Never got on with any 3D on a screen smaller than a cinema and even there, you can't stop thinking about it so lose the immersion. The one exception imho being Avatar.

A few people have made similar points but would this not also apply to anything non-stereoscopic on a screen? I appreciate that 3D isn't as immersive as VR, but depth in an image is preferable to no depth.  I think the same game on 3D vs non-3D screens is a comparison that makes more sense than the whole 3D vs VR one.

I completely agree with that, @bear. The PS3 was being pushed beyond its limits to provide a lacklustre 3D experience, and as a result a lot of people have a negative impression of the very idea of stereoscopic 3d in games, aside from VR.

With the power of current consoles, HDR , high refresh rate tvs and even lightweight glasses sized oled displays like the nreal air, the technology is all there now to really do 3D justice, but it's too late.

Some interesting replies here. 

I've never actually played 3D games on a TV/monitor but it sounds like the experience was pretty underwhelming for a lot of people. 

I use the fairly old Sony OLED cinema headset (hmz-t3) and I've read that it doesn't suffer from the crosstalk and darkness issues of a 3D tv and glasses setup, but since I've never used a 3d tv, that didn't mean much to me.

The Sony headset provides 3D that to me feels akin to what I get from VR just with a lower field of view and a far sharper image (I guess these things are related). It's not immersive in the way that vr is and does at times have the feel of looking at a diorama I guess, which works well for third person games. I just think of it as like playing a regular game on a screen, but with a solidity and depth to the image that for me is far more important/impressive than any other recent graphical tech I'm supposed to be impressed by. 

Witcher 3, Halo (MCC), GTA 5, Alan Wake, RIME and many others in 3D have impressed me far more than basically anything I've played in VR aside from maybe Alyx and Astrobot. 

 In a lot of cases the idea of playing a game in VR is a lot more enjoyable than the stomach turning reality, especially when it comes to first person games. 3D is just an enhancement of existing games without having to redesign everything.

There are some emulators that offer 3D support that is far less janky than the VR emulator stuff. Dolphin, PSP and even PS1 via some sort of Duckstation magic can be played in 3D pretty seamlessly. 

I think 3D gaming is the best example of something sent out to die in the mainstream before the technology was ready. The push came from Sony in the PS3 era, on console hardware that just wasn`t upto the task. I tried 3D gaming on PS3 at the time and wasn`t very impressed. The 3D effect was either barely noticeable or tanked the framerate. I didn`t like 3D movies in cinemas either.

My guess is that low quality PS3 3D is where most people`s experience of 3D gaming began and ended and (alongside 3d movies) is where the common view that it wasn't worth the effort comes from. Maybe even the 3DS, but judging all of 3D gaming based on that seems quite silly.

Where 3D gaming shone/still shines is on PC. Nvidia 3D vision supports a massive amount of games from the past decade (thanks to the modders at Helixmod etc, no thanks to Nvidia). I played Witcher 3 in 3D 6 or 7 years ago and it`s still more impressive visually to me than anything I`ve played on my PS5 or the PC I built this year. I kept my old PC for 3D vision since Nvidia dropped support in the drivers a few years ago. Been playing through GTA5 in 3D and it`s still more visually impressive than anything I`ve played on my PS5 or new PC, including GTA5 in VR with the mod (a lot more visually impressive than that with none of the nausea etc).

I can`t believe this tech has been binned while we chase higher resolutions and ray tracing etc (I guess you could consider vr an evolution of regular games in 3D but I'd be inclined to disagree) .

Have you tried 3D gaming, what hardware did you use and what did you think of it?

Yen being in the toilet not putting you off @Darwock? 75000 has crossed some sort of psychological barrier for me I think. Also I hate product lotteries. I'll wait. 

Not surprised they're forcing bundles with a digital game, I think the yen price of the headset still works out significantly lower than Europe etc using the current exchange rate.

Guess the Japanese stock allocation is going to be a joke again if it's straight to lotteries, there can't be many people here willing to bite at that price.

I think there’s a sort of homogenized image of “gamer” that’s pushed by games journalism etc in a way that doesn’t really happen in other entertainment media. A belief that if someone likes games they therefore should like all genres and styles of game,

 I’m really into retro games, have a big collection that I play regularly etc. Love arcade games, “pick up and play” , am basically all about instantly gratifying gameplay experiences. I am at heart still a Dreamcast fanboy who hasn’t really been in tune with the mainstream since the Dreamcast/GameCube/PS2 era. Still enjoy first party Nintendo stuff.

I also really like VR. Not so much the wave your hands around mini game stuff, but the 3D headset aspect. The sense of scale and feeling of presence you can get from higher end VR games is something I find myself excited about going forward.

So, I like older/indie games with satisfying gameplay and also cutting edge VR stuff. Everything in between I really just don’t have much interest in. AAA games on a TV? Might just be a lack of imagination on my part, but I don’t find them remotely immersive and always just get bored and stop playing after the initial few hours once the game goes into the content padding stage, even if it was a game where the setting etc interested me. I’d generally rather watch a movie or read a book. I like the idea of playing certain big AAA games but the reality of sitting down and playing them never lives up to my imagination. I have a fairly long list of AAA open world games that have been played for about 10-15 hours and then never touched again. 

On 17/11/2022 at 19:13, Thor said:

Astrobot, which is absolutely in my top 5 VR games, was designed specifically for VR.  Games like The Last of Us and Uncharted can't simply be converted/updated for VR. 

Have you played Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice VR on PC? 
I’ve been playing it recently and despite it just being the regular game on a vr headset played with a controller, it really elevates the experience for me. To be honest, I’d have little to no interest in playing the game on a TV and only bought it because it supports VR. Some of the environments are really impressive, even in third person there’s a massive difference between the sense of scale and presence you get in the headset vs just looking at a flat image on a tv.

It’s hard to come from that and not strongly believe that any number of third person Playstation games would be extremely worthwhile experiences in a vr headset, even if just controlled with the Dualsense.

There’s also stuff like Hellblade VR on steam. 

I’d love to see some of Sony’s AAA library get similar VR headset support even if it just involved playing with the dualsense. Unfortunately I’m sure Sony are aware by now that there is a large contingent of VR enthusiasts and games journalists who would lose their shit about that because “not a true vr experience” and others who’d write long negative articles about how it made them feel nauseous, so it will almost certainly never happen.

I’m having more of a dilemma about this than most gaming hardware I buy
 

 I have psvr and a quest/gaming pc setup. I want this because the hardware seems like a major upgrade but I think there’s a real chance it’s going to flop at this price and end up with a very lackluster library, and that puts me off preordering. Without big games that take advantage of the upgraded visuals etc, what’s the point of all that fancy hardware?

 If it worked with PC at least there’d still be that option if if flops and the bigger PlayStation vr games dry up/ it just ends up as a quest 2 port player.

At least there are modders keeping PCVR on life support regardless of the non-existent VR support from big companies . If this thing isn’t a commercial success it will be a paperweight in a couple of years or at best an overspecced headset for playing low budget indie/rhythm games.

 I got my ps5 adapter for psvr 1 in the post yesterday and tried a couple of games. Some games look extremely good in the original headset with the resolution bump the ps5 provides (a couple of dreams experiences have extremely impressive/sharp visuals on ps5 whereas dreams on ps4 was a blurry mess). I think Sony might have made the wrong decision for this point in time by so heavily prioritizing specs over affordability.

2 hours ago, amc said:

Went bonkers and pre ordered the Horizon bundle and controller chargers. That's a Quest, GearVR with S9+, PSVR1, a pair of Nreal Air glasses and now PSVR2.

 

My fucking eyes are gonna fall out before I'm 51.

How are the nreal airs in terms of comfort and resolution etc? 

I have the old Sony HMZ t3 but it's only 720p and not very comfortable.