If you've been following these threads, you know I've been excited about this one since it was announced. Well, its out in just over a week. And the final trailer just dropped:
Yep, I'm hyped.
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Currently working through FFVII Crisis Core on the PS5. Almost done with the story but my completionist DNA won't let me until I've competed all 300 missions π©
Was hoping for more of an update than a retread of the original game with better graphics, but it's still an enjoyable game
Just bought NO Man's Sky during the latest Steam Sale. I have not started it up yet.
Restarted Red Dead 2, this time on PC.
Skull & Bones, which Ubisoft has been working on since Black Flag was released, has been delayed
Signed up for PSPlus Premium last night.... gotta teach my kids about the classic Jak & Daxter and Ratchet & Clank fun.
Fired up Bioshock Remastered last night and forgot pretty much everything I knew when I ran through it when it came out. Trying to work through that, Bioshock 2, and Bioshock Infinite in order at the moment.
Also - Alien Fireteam. Come get some!
I'm excited for Hogwarts Legacy to come out. Not sure how convinced I am that it's going to be a good game based on all the gameplay I've seen up to this point, but I'm still pumped to be able to run around the wizarding world for the first time since I played the playstation 1 game.
I'm back on GoW RagnarΓΆk. I had to step away from it because it's gonna hurt and my self-preservation instincts kicked, in but now I'm back at it.
Still playing my way through the Final Fantasy series. All of these older games are new to me and I've now made my way to VI. I'm also eagerly anticipating Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Hello fellow gamers
I've been quite busy
I beat The Cult of the Lamb which is a lot of fun. You play as a cute lil lamb sacrificed and resurrected as leader of a cult for an old god that was betrayed by other gods. You recruit new members, build up your temple, and slay demons. You can also sacrifice your members, drug them, and make them fast. Lol. You have to maintain your cult happiness by providing food, and keeping the grounds clean, and preaching sermon to keep their devotion up.
Sometimes when they're unhappy they start to dissent, at which point I would usually throw em in jail and re-educate them daily until they were happy again. Lmao. It's Stardew Valley meets... Well I dunno. But the fighting and resource gathering is fun and pretty simple. I played this on my steam deck and it was perfect for that platform. Do recommend.
I'm also about halfway through Plague tale: innocence. Looks and plays great on the deck, story is pretty good too. I'll probably check out the sequel whenever I decide to finish this one up.
I'm about 3/4 of the way through of a Dead space replay. With the remake coming out in A WEEK I decided to refamiliarize myself with this classic and it's just as good as I remember. Except for that asteroid shooting section... If you've been following previews at all, it looks like that section has been changed for the better
thank God. Anyway, it's tense with great gameplay. Can't wait for next week.
Lastly, I decided to give The Last of Us a third try because of the show coming out recently. I could NEVER get into this one because of the amount of stealthing that is required, but I've come around to it. Just as good as all the rave reviews have made it out to be all these years. I just made it to a Spring in Salt Lake City. Fall and Winter were... Intense. Can't wait to dive into the sequel and I'm excited to start the show with everything very fresh in my mind.
.... Ooh, also, in cult of the lamb... You can make your followers eat poop. Sometimes they even ask for it. Lmao.
Not a video game per se, but I've recently gotten into playing chess and have started playing on chess.com
Not gonna lie, it sometimes makes me rage harder than any video game can lol
I've had the switch wrapped since day one, but I decided to try my hand at customizing the pro controller this weekend. The orange is a little too bright for my liking. It's always hard getting the color match right, especially with an online order. I might swap back to black on the front and keep the triggers orange. Anyway I just thought I'd share.
Oohh, that's a nice wrap on your switch.
The back of the switch matches the front of the dock too. It's purdy nice.
Finally got a PS5 before Christmas, and have been playing through exclusives I've missed over the last ten years.
Did god of war and ragnarok first and holy fuck were both games so completely good.
Just finished the main campaign of Spider-Man, and I can't remember a game that was this much fun just to wander aimlessly. The city is beautifully done and the traversal is fluid. The story is fine, and feels a little rushed in the last act, but I'm going out of my way to platinum this. Before I got the PS5, I bought Gotham knights during Black Friday sale, and it just got tedious. Spider-Man is the game it was trying to be, and after playing it, I don't think I'll finish Gotham knights.
DLC next, then Miles Morales, then I'm thinking last of us so I can start the show.
The reviews for dead space remake are great! 9/10 average right now. I'm hype boy!!
Forspoken didn't do so hot. Neither did Callisto... So glad I waited on those.
I saw it download last night.... I am hype as well
Just bought it on Steam! PC version includes Dead Space 2 as a freebie. Can't wait to play both of these games again.
Has anyone played What Remains of Edith Finch? I recently heard about it on an Adam Grant podcast and am very intrigued.
I played it last year on Game Pass. Pretty good, not hard or anything and is pretty simple, but there is a small sort of puzzle element to it. Focuses a lot on the actual story (which is a really good storyline, IMO).
For those that forgot - Dead Space remake drops today. I have quite the back log i need to get through so I'm not going to be a day 1 player, but probably one I'll pickup when it goes on sale.
Don't know if anyone is a Hitman fan, but the new update was released yesterday and by all accounts that I've seen it looks pretty awesome. Didn't have time to dig into it yesterday, but will definitely take a look at it this weekend.
Gaming related - Nvidia looks like it could be releasing the remainder of the 40xx card lineup this year, but there's a catch. performance is going to marginally better than it's 30xx counterparts for the 4050 and 4060 and maybe the 4070.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/rtx-4060-rtx-4050-desktop-gpus-launch-...
This, on top of another recent report (from AMD) the demonstrated the value per FPS shows that the current lineup of AMD cards is just poor.
I'm just frustrated with the state of PC hardware right now. I'm not regretting my PS5 purchase (even with the pro rumors swirling this year). I just need to forget about my pc game back log and pick up the controller.
How is this thread so dead when so much is going on? You nerds wandering around Hogwarts like me or what?!
I will be on Monday! (Hopefully). My pre-order from Amazon is late. They sent an apology email and everything. I'm irritated about them not having my order on time but I appreciate the fact that they told me ahead of time they weren't going to have it the day of
Because their not true wizards. True wizards are ones that can be either be possessed by or summon deamons when going insane from too much Winds of Magic, sniffing that Warpstone crack to get high, or just being from Norsca.
Or sumtimes a good laff w'en a Shaman's 'ead explodes and makes da otha Orc Boyz 'ead explodes after 'e turns sum 'umie gitz into squigs or bring Mork's (or Gork's) foot down ta crush t'em.
Do you think it would be a fun game for someone that isn't a Harry Potter fanatic? It's getting superb ratings but I'm worried it will just be okay for someone like me.
I think it will all depend on how you view the Hogwarts world. I'm not the biggest Harry Potter fan and feel it looks fun and well made but waiting to see what my wife who's diehard potter fan thinks after a week or two before I get it or not.
If it's a fun game that happens to be in the Harry Potter universe then I'll definitely give it a shot.
I'm not the biggest Potter fan and I've been really enjoying it so far.
My take, as someone who has not played Hogwarts Legacy, it looks like generic triple A action RPG with a Harry Potter skin. Take Assassin's Creed/Witcher style lock on combat, add a small splash of spell diversity, and you have Hogwarts Legacy. I've not heard anyone talk about any cool mechanics with the game so my guess is it is pretty standard as far as an experience goes.
i also haven't played it, but that was my similar take on Miles Morales as I was watching my kid play this weekend... my first (and really only) thought was "oh... this is GTA on a PG rating wrapped in a spiderman suit"
Yepp, maybe a larger conversation or different one from this thread but there really haven't been many risks in the big gaming spaces recently. People seem to be content with a semi open world sandbox that has a season pass, some microtransactions, and somewhat smooth combat. It's not a bad thing, but there really isn't a ton of novel projects hitting the market for big publishers.
Bottom line. Most games will be good to really good and will play generally the same.
I think this has been the case for a while now. They are terribly risk averse because the biggest companies are super concerned about immediate results.
New mechanics, new ideas (or even rehashing old ideas that aren't currently popular) is in the independent space now.
edit: all that said, I'll probably pick up Hogwart's Legacy when it hits $45
and this is why i'm generally leaning towards indie or small production games at the moment. I'm STILL playing FTL (over 300 hours logged and I had to do a double-take when I saw that), Subnautica ate up a chunk of my time the last few years, and I've got others that are just waiting to get my time (Citizen Sleeper, Bastion, Bloodstained to name a few).
FTL is so hard. I think I beat it once out of 100+ attempts
Look at Anthem, it would have been amazing if they'd pull it off, but new mechanics didn't save anything. It bombed hard. Look how much crap CD Projekt Red took for cyber punk because they wanted to be bleeding edge, though they missed a bit, but it was still a good game (after many patches)
I don't know if that is entirely true about Anthem. There were much deeper flaws around that game. The team didn't know what game it was making until it was announced at E3 selling a bill of goods they had never even heard of before, the game was billed as being in development for 7 years but was scrapped and rebuilt within a 1-1.5 year timeframe, and it was launch with a very rough story, lacking progression system, poor technical state, and disinteresting loot.
The mechanics are probably the only thing that let it limp around for as long as it did. It was incredible to Ironman your way around levels.
Agree that Cyberpunk failed but again, their issue was being too ambitious, shooting for the moon, and delivering swiss cheese. The game was a buggy, clunky mess that got off more on hype.
There are still absolutely ways to innovate in the space but you consistently see big corporations shy away from that because it doesn't print money which is what they need to do in order to survive. They need consistent, predictable launches with forecastable sales numbers to keep the machine running.
Anthem's biggest issue was like you said they didn't know what they were making until like 18 months out and then didn't have time to make a game cause they wasted another 6 years worth of cash doing who knows what. But once they finally had a concept it would have been great if they had 7 years of that concept no 18 months. But part of that innovation is not wasting 6 years time because no one wants to fund that.
I've heard the frame-rate drop when the player gets to Hogwarts can be absoutely horrible, like going from 60fps to 7fps lol, so I'm a bit nervous about whether my computer can handle this game in its current unoptimized state. Have you run into any of those problems if you're playing on pc?
Yeah this happens quite a bit, doesn't make it unplayable but it's annoying.
https://youtu.be/Qqhc3mK06r0
"Dawi-Zharr!" *STOMP STOMP* "Deamons forced into machines!" * STOMP STOMP* "Big Hats!" *STOMP STOMP*
https://youtu.be/ASLcFaaiNgM
Also Immortal Empires is free for anyone that owns Total Warhammer III, but still needs Warhammer I, II, and DLC to play as the factions from those. Nice QoL stuff and bug fixes too.
Wow that's an awesome trailer! Other than the games I have no Warhammer knowledge, so what are they teasing at the end of the trailer? New DLC faction? I haven't played WH3 in a few months but need to go back to it sometime. Always get a little burnt out towards the late-game phase of Immortal Empires campaigns lol.
Chaos Dorfs Faction DLC. They used to be part of the main Dorfs until the Great Chaos War isolated them away from the rest of their kin in Northern Mountains near the Chaos Wastes they started worshipping Hashut when they felt abondoned by their kin and the three main Dorf God's (Grungi, Grimner, and Vaylaya). They started inserting magic runes in their bodies to become wizards (with terrible side effects) and forcing Deamons into their war machines causing them to go even crazier.
The end part of the trailer just makes it official that they are adding them in but many people already speculated/knew they were going to be added soon when there were Chaos Dorfs quotes in loading screens and the Immortal Empires map showcase trailer shown areas where they are located in lore.
Ok cool, that's what I figured it was! I remember prior to WH3 coming out people were speculating that the 4 new factions would be Kislev, Grand Cathay, Ogres, and Chaos Dwarfs so I figured they'd show up in some DLC eventually.
After Chaos Dorf faction DLC, there really isn't anymore BIG factions left to add. Next they make some Legendary Lord's for some factions like Boris Todbringer for Empire, Nagash for Vampire Counts, Thanquol for Skaven, and The Red Duke (don't know which faction specifically because he was Brettonia Knight turned Vampire in lore). Also they still need to add missing units for some factions.
People want some of the lesser known factions playable; Border Princes, Tilea (Not-Italy Italy), Estalia (Not-Spain Spain) as an example of they are in the game just not playable and their units are basically Empire units in game.
They want Nippon (Not-Japan Japan) and Ind (Not-India India), but they didn't have much lore or really any units on tabletop.
Araby some want too, but similar to Nippon and Ind with units and lore.
Might as well touch on a few of the games that I've been plodding through lately.
Dead Space Remake - Holy shit they nailed it. Absolutely nailed it. If you loved the original, this is worth a buy. The completely rebuild from the ground up makes this shine. Graphically, its amazing, but what really surprises me is how all the little things they tweaked and reworked makes for a better and more in depth playthrough. I would not be shocked if its on a short list for Game of the Year, it is shockingly well done.
Hogwarts Legacy - Its a beautiful game, and the gameplay mechanics are easy to adapt to. I'm only a little into it, having just gotten through Hogsmeade for the first time, but it does play really well. I do wish the NPCs would be a little more reactive to you when you're casting spells around them (for example, if you straight up Incendio a NPC, they don't even flinch). If you like exploration games you'll enjoy this one. I think the Assassins Creed: Hogwarts is a good comparison here. With that said, I have not unlocked the Room of Requirements and I do know that doing so opens up a whole plethora or additional gameplay options, so I'm still holding out on a full review until I'm done. That said, it genuinely is a fun game, and if you do like HP, you're missing out if you don't get into this one.
With regards to Hogwarts Legacy, it's not my typical kind of game at all, but I'm very much enjoying it. I've sunk about 24 hours so far, mostly with exploration stuff and killing things around the map. I will say that at times, it seems very basic when it comes to a game, but I also like that to some extent because it's not overly convoluted with what you need to do or what buttons you have to remember. I wouldn't have given it a look if I wasn't a Harry Potter fan, but I'm happy I chose to shell out for it.
I haven't played it yet and have only watched a few hours (8ish) of let's play's on youtube but it seems to me like they were caught in the middle of "Let's make a game for kids" and "Let's make a game for adults." It seems repetitive and a bit too simple in some places but, again, I haven't played it yet. I'm going to get it when things slow down in the summer and I can give it the time it deserves. I'm sure there will be some awesome DLC dropping for it eventually.
I'm a systems engineer. The room of requirements sounds awful
Oh that's nothing, wait til you get to the Alcove of Acceptance Criteria
I just want to say Bungie can go F themselves for nerfing HOIL. Sure I know constant storm grenade spamming was a bit much but WTF am I going to wear? It's a huge nerf. There are like 5 viable exotics for titans (probably 6 now with hallowfire heart being better than hoil)
HOIL was basically all Void, arc was half hoil, solar was like a third hoil. Can I get some good exotics please!
Atomic Heart is getting rave reviews. The trailer gave me some Bioshock vibes and it sounds like that definitely comes across in the gameplay. Looking forward to diving in soon.
Been binge playing Octopath Traveller II since Saturday (about thirty-five hours in four days). Liked the first one, the sequel seems to keep what worked and made some good changes to the classes, been liking the sequel so far.
It's on Switch, PS4, PS5, and Steam.
I want to try this Doomstack so bad, but learning new campaigns mechanics while learning a new faction at the same time will take awhile to get this.
Also doesn't help Grimgor is right up my ass when I start getting close to building War Machines.
Jedi Survivor is available to play tomorrow.....
So I'll be doing that for a while
That release has snuck up on me. It'll probably be my next title after I finish playing Atomic Heart.
I enjoyed 99% of the first game ... everything except the final boss. I'll pick this one up eventually when it goes on sale and I've cleared out more of my backlog.
Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe Edition is on sale on Steam. If you never experienced this game before, you owe it to yourself to give it a whirl.
I played it a few months ago, certainly an interesting one. I was never sure of what I was doing. Lol
Spent a few hours playing Jedi: Survivor this morning. Really digging it so far.
I loved the first game, and I'm glad this one starts you off with all the powers of a full fledged Jedi. No need to "relearn" everything like the first game progressed.
Only negative...150GB download. You can see where those resources have been used, but still that's a lot
I had a ton of fun playing it over the weekend, but....
I might have to put it down for a bit until some follow-up patches are released. There's some kind of memory leak going on with the PS5 version that absolutely kills performance after an hour or so of playing, and the only real way to clear it is to reboot the whole system. Some of this is probably the fact they force raytracing to be on regardless of mode, performance or fidelity. The HDR itself in the game is broken to the point you have to max out all system settings to offset the game, and there's a lot of annoying graphical bugs throughout that just need to be ironed out. EA released this too early, and is basically using all early adopters as beta testers. Not great.
Once the bugs are ironed out, it'll be a fantastic game, likely in the conversation for GOTY and something you'll replay often.
Of course now that I say this I am reading that they are putting out a patch tomorrow to hopefully resolve a lot of these performance issues. Doesn't appear to be dealing with the HDR issues, yet, which is disappointing, but if it resolves the frame rate drops that'll be a big help.
I had been reading about this. I haven't run into too many issues on the Series X, but there certainly have been some.
I just chalked it up to the fact that that seems to be a contagion across most AAA releases these days. They get crunched and pushed out too soon.
So last week's update didn't do to terribly much to help, but the one they released yesterday did, at least for me. On PS5, the HDR issues are fixed, and that seems to have made it rain a lot smoother than it was earlier. I think the memory leak issues are still there, and it does take a while for all textures to load in when you first start it up, but the game at least now looks amazing (it did before, but seeing it running with working HDR rather than the workaround is so much better) able to run smooth.
Been enjoying this on the Switch. Glad it finally released.
Advance Wars was the game that made me beg my parents for GBA + Advance wars for Christmas when i was in middle school!!!!!
Tears of the Kingdom getting 10's across the board from many reviewers!
So pumped. It just so happens my wife it out of town tomorrow through Monday. This is going to be the most action my poor switch has gotten in months.
I very rarely pre-order games, but I did for Tears of the Kingdom. I'm very hype to return to that universe.
On another note: after a year of salivating over a Steam Deck I finally gave in and bought one last month. 10/10 would recommend. It's great to take my entire backlog of PC games with me on the go or use a dock and play them on the living room TV. It's also an emulating powerhouse if that's your jam.
On another note: after a year of salivating over a Steam Deck I finally gave in and bought one last month
Welcome brother.
Not sure where else to put this, but this was at a Zelda release party at a gamestop.
Awesome....
I have no idea what THAT is, but it doesn't top this:
Best nights as a teen were the halo launch nights going to GameStop and then staying up all night playing halo. Last one I went to was the destiny launch night since then I haven't had a game worth going.
This is great! Side note: I very strongly considered seeing if my local Gamestop did a midnight release for Zelda pre-orders. I have fond memories of lining up before midnight for NCAA games at the Gamestop in Cburg. There were always plenty of Tech football players in line, hype AF that they were in a video game. I haven't done anything like that since the PS3 generation when you could just get a digital copy of the game you wanted and it would waiting to install on release day.
How's everyone enjoying Tears of the Kingdom? I've been having a great time with it. Love all of the new mechanics and the story feels better than Breath of the Wild.
Story and pacing so far are much better. The "dungeons/temples" feel like they have much more complexity to them.
It's going to be crazy seeing how people break this game considering all the stuff people pulled off with BotW.
I enjoy the shrine variety much more so far. I disliked running into the repetitive combat shrines in BOTW.
Not going to lie, I was stuck on one shrine for about 45 minutes before I gave up and looked at a guide. And there was another main quest where I had to activate something that was not completely obvious to me, so I wandered around for an hour. Now that I'm older and have less free time, I dislike those moments of time "wasted". I feel like Elden Ring was a lot more intuitive about what to do without being too obvious with menu icons and yellow checkpoints on the screen.
Yeah I have looked up a couple of things so far but I'm trying to figure as many of the puzzles out as I can. If it becomes more of a headache than an enjoyment I'll look up the solution lol.
So far so good. Combining random shit I find to solve a puzzle or to get somewhere out of reach has been fun, and hilarious. There's an unspoken rule at the house that if I'm about to cobble together some sort of unholy abomination to "do something stupid" and my wife is nearby, I have to call her in the room to watch.
Sometimes it works out the way I planned. Other times Link gets hurled across the field in a fiery death and we both laugh so hard it hurts.
Any Diablo IV enjoyers in here?
I haven't checked the beta (or even the story) but I'm likely to buy it the moment its released.
I'm a bit late to the comments but I played both betas. It had a diablo 3 feel but potentially a better skill tree, we'll see about that. I played the necro first then the sorceress. Balancing was all over the map it seemed. I hope they do a good job of fixing that for launch but that's probably too much to ask of blizzard. I hope loot drops at a good rate. I hate games with low loot drop rates. If there's not loot then it's just a hack and slash game.
I might actually check out a Warhammer game now:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/05/warhammer-40000-boltgun-is-a-loud...
I'm not an FPS guy, but I am a 40k guy.
And I can endorse, 10/10...would purge xenos for the Emperor again.
The look of the game is so cool (and it's pretty easy to tell what going on even with the retro inspired visuals). The game does have graphics sliders so you can make it look a bit more modern gen, or even less for that matter. I mean it doesn't go to MW levels, but you can make it look like the original Doom if that's your cup of tea.
The weapons themselves are the best part. The bolt gun sounds awesome when it fires, and even though it's the starting gun it's actually useful through the whole game. The shotgun might be one of the best shotguns in a game in a long time in terms of how it "feels" to use it, if that makes sense.
When I watched the trailer I was transported back in time about 25 years (1998 sounds about right for the graphics presented). I'm worried I wont get "it" because I have zero Warhammer background, but for $20 that's probably a carefree investment I can make. And the reviews coming in on Steam are hitting the overwhelmingly positive mark.
Diablo IV coming out tonight (for preorders), the 5th for others. Who is amped to grind?
just add another game to the back log. I've just accepted that's how its going to be... I just added the new Warhammer game (see above) last week, and outside of installing it I haven't done anything with it. Throw in some recent metroidvania type games, + added Alan Wake for the PS5 because it went on sale after the AW2 announcement, and it just keeps getting worse.... so that's a long way of saying "yes"
For folks that have Game Pass, there is a game that just dropped called Ghostlore that seriously scratches that ARPG itch while you wait for D4.
Small team made it, and it's more "eastern" focused, but the skill tree and leveling system is awesome. It felt like playing Diablo 2, in the best way possible