What Games Are You Playing?

DragoStark said:
I finally finished God of War 2018 after a checks calendar 7 month break lmao. I really did enjoy it, and I'm very glad I did play the previous God of War games because understanding Kratos' backstory made the impact even greater.
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I can also confirm that if you get the chance to play it, the new one is just as good, no drop in quality or anything. Possibly even better? hard to remember.

DragoStark said:
But Cyberpunk 2.0 and Phantom Liberty DLC dropped so therefore everything else goes on hiatus and I'm diving back into Night City (and Judy, my LOVE) for the forseeable future.
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I got my V to level 50 post 2.0 and bought the Phantom Liberty DLC today, so planning to spend a bit of time in Dog Town this weekend checking out the new stuff! :)
 
Goodbye Volcano High
Strong contender for Game of the Year; it's a three-way battle between Resident Evil 4 Remake, Final Fantasy XVI and this at the moment. While those first two excel on gameplay and production values, Goodbye Volcano High's appeal is all about the story, characters and music.

In some ways it's a classic coming of age story as protagonist Fang struggles to find success with their band while navigating the final year of high school and their friends' changing priorities. The unique complication is that all these characters are anthropomorphic dinosaurs and they've just found out that a huge asteroid is heading their way.

The original Life is Strange was clearly a major influence on the tone, setting and soundtrack. Even the main character's voice actor sounds a lot like Chloe. It really nails those LiS1 feels too, from the warmth of its personal connections to the growing sense of existential dread lurking in the background.

Unlike LiS, there's no exploration or environmental puzzles though. It's 70% interactive movie, 20% visual novel, and 10% rhythm action. The art aims for a hand-drawn style that gives it a distinct look, despite it clearly not having a huge budget. I'm not sure how much impact my dialogue choices had on the larger story, but they do work to let the player express their idea of Fang's feelings well, which helped make me feel connected to what was happening. The music sections work well too, being just tricky enough to require focus without getting frustratingly difficult.

Highly recommended if you like narrative adventures.
 
Completed my first run through on Lies of P, I did a couple of the bosses before they nerfed them a bit which I was proud of.

For anyone unaware, this is a Souls like game, I played it on the Game Pass as it appeared there on day 1.

My 1st run was with a giant sword that can turn into a glaive, my NG+ run I'm going Sekiro style sword, and if I'm still engaged, I'll do NG++ with an elemental weapon I think.

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I started on Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

It's all very serious and a bit edgy and I'm not actually sure what's going on, but I'm enjoying it. Supposedly it's similar to all those Souls games, but I've never played any of them, so who knows...?

It actually feels pretty similar to those recent God of War games. The graphics are a bit disappointing for this day and age, but it's still a decent game (especially for the £15 I paid for it).
 
awadama said:
I started on Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

It's all very serious and a bit edgy and I'm not actually sure what's going on, but I'm enjoying it. Supposedly it's similar to all those Souls games, but I've never played any of them, so who knows...?

It actually feels pretty similar to those recent God of War games. The graphics are a bit disappointing for this day and age, but it's still a decent game (especially for the £15 I paid for it).
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To be fair there are some similarities with a game like Lies of P and God of War, they both have you running around levelling up stuff in an RPG style, and equipping items/gear.

The main differences are that God of War is far more narrative, Lies of P and a lot of other Soulslike games don't necessarily have the greatest stories, but usually the story is there to kind of carry the mechanics of the game.

Soulslike games also don't have difficulty levels, the difficulty is the difficulty, and if you can't do it, then you have to get good and level up some more. They're not for people who hate dying and trying again, very much trial and error, rewards learning the enemies and using the available tools you have to work your way through the game.
 
Lordhippos said:
Completed my first run through on Lies of P, I did a couple of the bosses before they nerfed them a bit which I was proud of.

For anyone unaware, this is a Souls like game, I played it on the Game Pass as it appeared there on day 1.

My 1st run was with a giant sword that can turn into a glaive, my NG+ run I'm going Sekiro style sword, and if I'm still engaged, I'll do NG++ with an elemental weapon I think.

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I will give it a look. Especially since I consider the Souls games as some of my favorite games.

I been playing The Crew Motorfest. It's a lot of fun for an open world simcade since the last one I played (Horizon 5) was a bit too brain dead for my tastes, I do miss the days of sim racers being about earning and driving the cars.
 
Lordhippos said:
Soulslike games also don't have difficulty levels, the difficulty is the difficulty, and if you can't do it, then you have to get good and level up some more. They're not for people who hate dying and trying again, very much trial and error, rewards learning the enemies and using the available tools you have to work your way through the game.
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Ahhhh, I think I'll probably be best avoiding Soulslike games then - I'm playing Stranger of Paradise on the very easiest difficulty level! 😅
 
Yep they're 100% not for everyone! that is totally fine as well, I like a good challenge in games when I can get one, some stuff I'll just play on normal difficulty more for the story, but from time to time I enable the harder difficulties and like to give myself a good challenge.

It's definitely a good idea not to step into Lies of P or other Soulslike games if you normally play on an easier difficulty setting, I could see that making the game quite frustrating instead of fun.

On the other hand, I think it's perfectly doable if you could play say God of War on Hard difficulty and still do pretty well, I don't usually play on the super hard difficulty levels on games, I find the one on Lies of P isn't too bad as is, die sometimes, but it's fun and I usually die from my own errors not because the game is unfair.
 
awadama said:
Ahhhh, I think I'll probably be best avoiding Soulslike games then - I'm playing Stranger of Paradise on the very easiest difficulty level! 😅
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If you end up liking the game structure of Stranger of Paradise, another approachable soulslike is Jedi: Fallen Order. That has difficulty levels and isn't too challenging on normal from what I recall.

I generally can't stand soulslikes. I tried Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Remnant, but they just made me bored and eventually angry, even when I finally defeated a boss. It's weird, since I do get satisfaction from gradually improving my high score in shmups, but high difficulty in a 30+ hour game doesn't do it for me. When there's a world to explore or a story to follow, I just want to make progress, not repeat every section a dozen times.
 
For me personally I like the main Soulsbornering series but sometimes get really frustrated with the clones, a lot of them seem to believe that the difficulty is the point of these games, it doesn't help that a lot of them are not tuned up to the same perfection they expect of the player.

I also remember being excited for Lords of the Fallen back in 2014 as it was the first game (to my knowledge) to mimic Dark Souls, only it turned out to be one of the buggiest games I ever played lol.

I haven't played Lies of P yet though so I can't really comment on that one.
 
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Almost finished with The Wind Waker HD now, so Nintendo will finally announce it for NSW.

I’m thinking of starting a fresh playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 next as I have the Phantom Liberty DLC purchased.
 
Dai said:
If you end up liking the game structure of Stranger of Paradise, another approachable soulslike is Jedi: Fallen Order. That has difficulty levels and isn't too challenging on normal from what I recall.
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Ah, I've played that one! I'm not much of a Star Wars fan anymore, but I really enjoyed the game.

I actually thought I'd finished it, but from looking at my trophies I never even finished the main story. I think I'll get back on it after I finish Stranger of Paradise - thanks for reminding me about it! 😄
 
Lordhippos said:
Good or bad I'm not sure, but there is a new Lords of the Fallen coming out very soon!
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Well after having an issue with the first game where a main quest NPC started T posing (or got stuck in some other pose, it was so long ago I can't recall for certain) and was unable to be interacted with, making it so I had to start the entire game again, I think I'll wait for reviews on that one lol.
With that said, I was able to finish The Surge 2 with very few problems and I think that's by the same developer so maybe the sequel will be a lot more stable, fingers crossed as The Surge 2 was actually really good.
 
Aeon said:
Well after having an issue with the first game where a main quest NPC started T posing (or got stuck in some other pose, it was so long ago I can't recall for certain) and was unable to be interacted with, making it so I had to start the entire game again, I think I'll wait for reviews on that one lol.
With that said, I was able to finish The Surge 2 with very few problems and I think that's by the same developer so maybe the sequel will be a lot more stable, fingers crossed as The Surge 2 was actually really good.
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While The Surge, The Surge 2 and the first Lords of the Fallen were all made by the same developer, this game is made by a completely different one, although still published by the same publisher. I've watched someone play a bit of it and I dare say it looks pretty fun. Will wait until it's much cheaper though.
 
Buzzkillington said:
While The Surge, The Surge 2 and the first Lords of the Fallen were all made by the same developer, this game is made by a completely different one, although still published by the same publisher. I've watched someone play a bit of it and I dare say it looks pretty fun. Will wait until it's much cheaper though.
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I just looked it up, I've never heard of Hexworks before, might be interesting to see what they come up with for this one; I'm just hoping that it won't break apart at the seams like the first game did when I played it back in 2014/early 15.
 
75 hours and 3 play throughs on Lies of P, I consider myself done with the game for now, but had a lot of fun with it. I did each build type (Strength (motivity), Dex (technique), Elemental (advance)).

I've not actually played the Surge games, or Nioh which also has been mentioned to me before, are they any good?

I have picked up anime Dark Souls (Code Vein) on Steam as it was only £6, can't go too far wrong for that price.

Will also be carrying on my Cyberpunk game in the background, I'll probably look at Lords of the Fallen once I've played Spiderman 2 later this month. The build variety in that looks really good so some replayability from that alone.
 
Lordhippos said:
I've not actually played the Surge games, or Nioh which also has been mentioned to me before, are they any good?
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With regards to the Surge, I actually played the second game before the first and thought it was absolutely fantastic, I just remember having a ton of fun playing it though it was a few years back so I'm trying to put my finger on why but I think it's a mix of the upgrade system, the interconnected level design and the general feel of the combat system, overall the Surge 2 is actually really good, something I'm not sure I can say about the first game as I didn't get far into that one, I picked it up on steam during the 2019 christmas sale, but I didn't get all that far into it, maybe it's that it just couldn't hold up to the much better sequel though I'm not sure why otherwise; overall I'd highly recommend the Surge 2 and maybe the first game on the cheap.

As for Nioh, I've played it and I'm kind of mixed on it, for the first 10 or so hours it's really good but after that it's difficulty just gets ridiculous, I remember one time when I was completely stuck on a level because I was forced into an arena and had to face at least 5 waves of really difficult enemies, I could not lure them out like I can in Dark Souls, at least not during that sequence, not to mention the fact that I get staggered if I run out of stamina rather than just being unable to dodge or sprint, this just made the game incredibly frustrating IMO so I sadly wasn't able to finish it, I have yet to play Nioh 2 but I did pick it up when it was on PS Plus last year so, I might check it out if I can find over a hundred gigs on my PS5 lol.
You might like Nioh but be prepared for some arduous difficulty spikes if you decide to get it; it is made by Team Ninja, the guys behind Ninja Gaiden, after all.
 
Finished Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty.

Did all endings and really most of what the expansion has to offer and I'm very impressed. Relatable characters, interesting conflicts, the same amazing backdrop. Actually more of what the main game had, only better, with a super-cyber-spy theme running throughout.

One thing that CDPR makes me feel, and it happened all the way back with The Witcher 2 is that they utilize a setting fully and completely, when designing the "game part" of the game.

Missions and story are built around deeply rooted ideas in the game world and it plunges you deeper into it, as if the world-class art direction and voice acting weren't enough. It's definitely one of the better crafted game worlds.

It's worth doing the two main endings (each with a couple of variations) as the final mission is completely different for each.

Going from ending to credits sequence was very much a mic drop moment.

I think I'm going for the platinum again, urgh.
 
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