Sane

Yeah it's weird, its like they didn't spend any time on that aspect of it. Call me shallow but I like my racing games having state of the art graphics, it's part of the appeal.

Edit: maybe more important than actual fancy graphics is the art direction, which it doesn't have really. It's just so bland and flat, it has zero personality. 

Due to being home alone for a while I've managed to put a lot of time into this. I'm really enjoying it. It's slick and streamlined, not too many systems that it becomes overwhelming but enough to keep things interesting. Lots of quality of life improvements compared to older games in the series. 

Also playing on hard feels right, it's a proper challenge and I died a fair few times, but it hasn't been frustrating (yet). 

I'd recommend this to anyone who likes SMT/Persona games, but actually also anyone who likes RPG's but who finds those games a bit daunting. This is the perfect gateway game. 

I don't think there's new missions, just a graphics touch up. 

I've been playing in first person mode, I think that's been added in earlier updates but it wasn't there when I played the game originally. Really suits the game, especially when you're just roaming about, really let's you appreciate all the little details. It's nuts to think this started as a 360/ps3 game. 

On the other hand, when you have to press buttons to torture someone or  spent 10 trying to maneuver some unwieldy vehicle into the exact right spot you remember this is a game from a different age. 

Since I managed to figure out how to buy this game I've been playing it quite a bit. 

It really is a stunning technical achievement. Even 10 years after it's release there's really nothing like it in terms of how convincing the world is. The atmosphere, especially with the new lighting, the level of detail, it's just incredible. 

It's too bad it's mixed up with all the juvenile attempts at humor and at times clunky gameplay, but I'm having more fun with this game then most of the recent releases I've played lately. 

Played a few more races. It's fine, I guess. I didn't really see any reason to keep playing though, so I uninstalled it. 

This is my favourite part of the cycle . 

I did one race while it was installing (you get to chose from 2 races). It seems to handle a little better than 2019 but it still doesn't feel great to me. I found myself wishing I was playing PGR instead. Graphically it's nothing special either. I did really like the audio, it has a setting for spatial audio and on my atmos setup it sounds really good. In the Porsche race I did there are constantly fireworks going off and that sounded impressively lifelike.

I think it' got decent reviews when it was released so I might play it for a bit and see if it grabs me.

I bought:

Cage of Souls

Brighton Rock

The Space between Worlds

Breakfast of Champions

The Ardent Swarm

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Many thanks to @Stopharage for listing them as always .

Mine lost in the mail . But was delivered yesterday .

I played the intro bit, everything seems present and correct. It's a bit by the numbers so far, but I'm looking forward to getting properly stuck in. 

Playing on hard because I feel like I should be able to handle it. I'll probably regret it later . 

I can't handle the absence of this in my life so I just ordered a Breaking Bad bluray box. Looking forward to rewatching that as I only watched it once back when it was originally aired.

On 22/08/2022 at 20:46, Benny said:

Lets talk about:

 

Overload

 

 

 

 

 

One of my absolute favourite games back in the golden DOS gaming age of the mid 90s was Descent II. Unlike all the endless Doom clones that filled the shelves and dominated the shareware circuit, the Descent games felt like something much more advanced. It would be a few years before Quake would really solidify the idea of mouse driven free look and full 3D environments and enemies, so the original Descent was something quite revolutionary for its time. The sequel was even strutting its stuff before Quake was even out.

 

 

And they were frankly incredible games - the levels were twisting, labyrinthine and sprawling affairs, with true 3D allowing the level designers' imaginations to really construct some quite fiendish maps. It's strange: much as I ended up enjoying Quake, Descent II was the game that kept pulling me back to explore it more. I remember playing it with a joystick that had a hat switch, that I would use for forward/back and strafe, which might sounds extremely weird, but it really worked and felt kind of awesome.

 

I've always lamented that after Descent 3 the series basically disappeared, and there were no other developers really attempting anything similar. With the odd exceptions like Forsaken, which to be honest were nowhere near as good.

 

So imagine my surprised and delight to find that there was a game out that not only attempts to revitalise that classic Decent feeling, but that it's also actually an honest to goodness reboot made by the original developers of the first two Descent games.

 

This is basically the Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night equivalent for the 90s DOS generation.

 

 

It's got everything: mad levels that will make you tear your hair out, blowing up a reactor and running for your life, massive, upgradable weapons and delightful swarms of missiles. And it can also be really very punishing, just like the original games. (Though there are many difficulty settings to tone it down to) 

 

But it also looks and sounds amazing, and will let you really push your PC if you want to, but it's also out on the PS4 and Xbox One for the curious and not currently drowning in old PC game nostalgia.

 

You get a substantial game for the money, and I would heartily recommend it as an overlooked gem.

Anyone have any experience with the xbox port? I'm mainly wondering about the framerate. 

Sounds good to me. I read it's all a little smaller scale which actually suits me fine. Less demons means I get to spend more time with the ones that are there rather than fusing them ASAP into different ones. And less time to finish means I'll actually have a chance to finish it.

Also I love what I've seen from the setting, I have to say the endless sand covered ruins of SMT V didn't really do much for me. 

Hope my game will arrive today, can't wait to get stuck in! 

Really looking forward to this, it has exactly the vibe I need right now.

Yeah like this. I never knew if there was a reason for it to be honest. 

On 22/08/2022 at 17:13, JamesC said:

Just dropped in to say Robocod on the Megadrive is one of my all time favourite platform games.

Operation Starfish is damn good too. 

Operation Starfish is great! Awesome gameplay, music, a LOT of levels. It even had one of those extra big cartridges because it's so awesome it didn't fit on a normal one. One of my favourite Megadrive games .

Don't know if this was posted before but it's a short behind the scenes of the last day of filming. Have some tissues handy if you're going to watch.

18 hours ago, ZOK said:

Which is the magic one, Ed or Ra? I was quite enjoying it but started reading something else and haven’t bothered to pick it up again.

Ra is the magic one. It didn't really work for me because it seemed to take ages to get going and once it does in the final third it kinda makes the first two thirds obsolete. I also didn't really gel with the characters, it's never really his strength but they seemed particularly one dimensional in this case. 

It does have some really cool ideas that stuck with me though, so I guess it's worth finishing it. 

2 hours ago, Broker said:

Yeah I would, assuming the price wasn’t crazy.

HBO Max was introduced here in the Netherlands earlier this year for 8 euro p/m and they did a special 50% lifetime discount deal if you signed up in the first month. 

8 hours ago, Jamie John said:

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (Switch)

 

Forum, I tried. Once on PS4, then on Switch, then on Game Pass and now again on Switch, but I just can't do it. It's just so easy, and so boring. I go into battles, where everyone it set to 'fight wisely', press A to get things started, and then that's it. The game plays itself while I check my phone. After the battle ends, I run up to another enemy, press A to get the drop on it, and then the cycle starts again, even against bosses. I haven't died, or come anywhere close to dying, in 15 hours of play. The enemies are charming, the writing is endearing, and the characters, while cliched, are inoffensive, but there must be more to a game than pressing one button and moving the analog stick, surely? There's just nothing to it, no friction or drama whatsoever. It's like playing a very expensive clicker game. I suppose you could say it's 'relaxing', but there's a fine line between that and soporific, and this falls into the latter for me.

 

Anyway, after ditching Radiant Historia earlier this year, and now this, I've still got Xenoblade Chronicles and FFX remastered on the Switch in my JRPG pile of shame. Perhaps they'll rekindle my spark for the genre, but I fear that @Sane and @ChewMagma may be right when they mentioned on the previous page that this sort of game is simply no longer for me 

It's too bad, but life's too short to spend it on trying to like things you don't enjoy. 

One thing I do want to respond to, not to try to convince you to keep trying but maybe for other people reading this: you can control the actions of your entire party. That, combined with the harder difficulty setting, made the game much more engaging for me. It's still not very difficult but much more challenging with a few proper difficulty spikes that require you to fully utilise the entire party's skills.  It's arguably also how the game is 'meant to be played' I'd say (controlling all the party members, not the higher difficulty). 

I really enjoyed Fine Structure too. It's a crazy mashup of mindbending, cosmic scale concepts and people with superpowers which sometimes seems a bit messy (or maybe I just couldn't always keep up) but somehow manages to successfully combine it all in an enjoyable novel. 

I read Ed last week, Qntm's first novel. That's also really good. Much shorter and less ambitious but a very fun read. 

The only book of his I didn't really like was Ra. I felt it was too long and just a little boring. 

Ooh I didn't realise this was coming to Xbox. I had Cyberpunk lined up to play after I finish Dishonored but I might go for this instead. Looking forward to hearing some impressions.

Hmm interesting. I recently started this, got a few hours into it and dropped it. As you say it felt really flat and disappointing compared to the older titles (which I loved). 

I guess I'll hang onto it and get back to it at some point. 

Edit: bought the season pass since it's on sale . 

I see they garantee that it will never be released digitally, as if that's a good thing. I really dislike the concept of making games artificially rare. So while that looks very cool I'm not going to give them any money. 

Also the buttons are the wrong way around. Maybe they fixed that with the rerelease though.

Also there's a sepaprate option for audio passthrough in the settings.