I’ve owned every PlayStation generation since the original. I don’t consider myself a Sony stan, but with the exception of the Xbox 360, I’ve felt each generation of the various PSX’s have had a better lineup for my tastes. (Halo is great, though)
This time around, not so much. After three years, I have purchased five titles for my PS5. And, by FAR, the game that gets the most play is my PS4-version of Minecraft, so my kids can play multiplayer.
If you’ve got money to burn, I’d recommend a Steam Deck + Dock and a Bluetooth controller of your choice instead. Most of the same games will run on either platform, with the advantages of PC gaming - mods, forward compatibility, access to the MASSIVE Steam store and library…
Alternately the Switch has had a great lineup of first party titles - as usual. Just pickup a pro controller too, the “joycons” develop drift so fast it’s not even funny. Every single joycon I’ve purchased (six pairs over five years) has developed drift in under a year. I know I can get them repaired, but at this point, I’m over it. Just buy a pro controller and have done with it.
(If anybody is curious, my five PS5 titles are
Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Spider-Man 2
Sackboy’s Big Adventure
Jedi Survivor
Diablo IV
All but one are available on PC. I bought the Spiderman games before the PC ports arrived. Jedi survivor had a bad port at launch and I really wanted to play it. And Diablo IV I was able to pick up used for cheaper than the PC price. …let’s just say that after hundred plus hours in D3, I’m glad I didn’t pay full price for D4.
I do also pay for PlayStation Plus, where I’ve downloaded and played a few dozen indie titles, all of which are also on PC.)
Let’s put it this way. Split screen was a mostly console exclusive feature before some genius decided to kill it off. Locking multiplayer behind a pay wall at some point was also the stupidest idea I’ve ever seen.
Most new titles for consoles are exactly as enjoyable on PC. The experience is almost identical. Companies prefer it this way too.
They can make a nice exclusive and release it for PC 2 years later to reap double the profit.
The above has me thinking that consoles are becoming a niche. I’d just get a steam deck for portable gaming and a play pass for the exclusives not yet available on PC.
Diablo 3: Season 30 - Season 30 started this week, so I've been working on leveling up my monk and completing Chapter 1 objectives.
Alan Wake 2 - Finished the game, and now I'm debating on going thru again on The Final Draft (aka new game plus) instead of moving on to Dead Space. I heard the beginning and end were slightly different and that there were extra manuscripts and videos to be found, plus I only have two achievements left, so why not go for 100%? Besides, I loved it. Remedy has been building a universe, and I can't wait to see what they come up with next. There's nothing that I've played from them that I haven't loved so far.
::: spoiler 🔦💥
There is a bit towards the end where you play as Alan and you're going through the forest and it had the original music from the first game. I didn't think this game would make me tear up, but it did during that section. I would love to see the original Alan Wake overhauled with the new engine. It would be phenomenal.
:::
I've only just started doing the dungeons, since I've only been playing for two weeks, but so far I'm not a big fan. It feels like there's only a few environments, not enough monster density, and the occasional backtracking is also boring (pretty short though, to be fair).
Diablo 3 has technically even less variety with its rifts, since it's just kill demons until a boss spawns, but it's just packed, and I loved blasting through tons of enemies. Although in a multiplayer session, when one player is just destroying everything at mach 2, and you're just waddling behind them, that's arguably worse (I played mostly solo or some friends, doing public sessions to farm bounties or materials).
The open world events, Helltide or Blood Harvest are a bit like the D3 rifts, just not as many enemies, but still really fun. It's a bummer that you can't just keep doing that, if you want to keep progressing your character.
Getting better Sigils is kind of a pain, since it's just RNG drops. I could easily do higher tier dungeons, but have to wait for them to drop. At least you're kinda guaranteed to get at least one Sigil on your current level I guess, so you don't have to move down. Now that I'm writing this, I gotta check if I can craft some higher tier ones, last time I was missing some materials, maybe it's not as bad.
Yeah I'm not a huge fan of the Nightmare Dungeons myself; the only reason to go through them is get glyph upgrades. It seems they rotate which dungeons become Nightmare ones each season, so I've been slowly working on a list of which I can go through the fastest so I can focus on other stuff.
iirc the Tree of Whispers is a guaranteed drop for sigils, but from what I've found they're usually lower tiered then what I want so I end up salvaging them anyway.
I was also dumb with getting higher level Sigils. The first option at the crafter was for some special thing, where I didn't have all the mats back then, and the next one was 20-25 (incidentally my own tier, when I first looked), but I just didn't scroll down. I can in fact craft up to tier 100, so at least that part doesn't seem as bad. Skipping a bunch of these lower tiers should speed up leveling the glyphs at least a bit.
No. Honestly. I own one, but I haven’t been able to play it for reasons relating to my work and I’ve got a lot of buyer’s remorse about it too. That really sucks, but I really don’t feel like I have missed out on much as far as gaming goes.
My gaming laptop has been more than a viable alternative. I really wish I hadn’t been so impulsive with the purchase of my PS5. I genuinely feel like it wasn’t worth all the struggle it took to get it, and the financial loss/burden/degradation that it caused.
I’ve been considering selling it, for some time now, but I’m having trouble committing…
I’d love to hear your stories/advice, for any of you in a similar situation.
I finished Cassette Beasts a couple of days ago and now I can never go back to Pokémon.
I honestly can’t sing its praises enough.
Don’t even know if I can play any other monster tamers now. Still, I might pick up Coromon and/or Nexomon: Extinction or something else at some point, but man, Cassette Beasts absolutely spoiled me.
Highly recommend to anyone who’d like some chill vibes (with some dark moments to make for good contrast) and no significant stress in terms of strategy. Like, yeah, it technically matters when it comes to type advantages, but sometimes it’s just fun to fuck around and see what fusions you can come up with, regardless of type.
Oh, and if you like games where you aren’t restricted to gender norms and can romance anyone of any gender, also a good option.
I feel like if you enjoyed the vibe of games like Stardew Valley or Spiritfarer or (going old school here) Chrono Trigger, you’ll probably enjoy this, even if the gameplay is entirely different.
Honestly, even if you enjoy Pokémon but might be sick of it for whatever reason, it’s a nice change of pace as well. It has enough in common to feel familiar, but sets itself apart in a bunch of ways which make it stand entirely on its own.
Music is also great, though you might get sick of one song that repeats. And repeats. And repeats.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Okami featured in one of these lists. Just to be sure I looked up some of Polygon’s and even in their Top 500, its not there, which is kinda depressing?
I’m not a fan of Zelda games - or most Nintendo games - but I do love when people take inspiration from them and make their own thing - Tchia, Darksiders, Oceanhorn, Tunic, and Ittle Dew all come to mind just as Zelda ‘clones’ - and I think there’s no higher example of that than Okami, a game that takes its inspiration and surpasses it in every way. The graphics were at the time mindblowing(frankly, still are), with its japanese classic art style cel shading, the soundtrack is phenomenal and Amaterasu has an excellent mobility, zipping across battlefields or simply open areas with easy and fluidity. The paintbrush is a stellar tool, both to use in puzzles and in combat, and the game boasts a charming cast of characters and engaging story. Probably the saddest tidbit about it is that it was also Clover’s farewell game, after its previous, unfairly lambasted, gem God Hand and two attempts at the beat’em up Viewtiful Joe series.
Nowadays the Zelda series has gotten a whole different kickstart with its open-world entries, burying these inspirations even further, but I still believe Okami easily stands atop most entries of that series, and on its own as well.
Okami is “Zelda-like” in its kind of medieval fantasy, action-adventure presentation, and in the way towns and NPCs feel, and perhaps in some of its bosses, but really it’s not all that much like a Zelda game. Okami is an quite standard all-ages real-time-battles RPG, whereas Zelda usually have no RPG mechanics - usually Zelda enemies are defeated in just one or two hits, with little or no stats, points or inventory. Zelda games usually have a lot of focus on puzzles and dungeons, or dungeon-like outdoor areas, whereas Okami has no puzzles. On the other hand Okami is obviously very steeped in (often silly or humorous) Japanese folklore, whereas Zelda is very much less wacky and often a little more emotional and dramatic, and has its own bespoke theming.
I liked Okami but I felt it was paced really quite slowly, and the battles/enemies were a little too RPG-like for my taste, as in taking quite a lot of real time for even weak enemies. I felt it lacked the mechanical polish that Zelda usually does: I felt generally the movement was a little slow and difficult (except in very open areas) and most disappointing of all was the frankly poor recognition of what brush move I’m drawing.
Okami has a fair amount of puzzles, they’re just mostly smaller to show the wider range of mechanics. Get ball into cup, bring vines to location, memorize dots on a page Simon says style. They’re ultimately not too different from a puzzle you might encounter in something like A Link to the Past, or Breath of the Wild. Not difficult enough to be integral but enough to test your understanding of the game mechanics and later reward you for wit. Some of them also become very important for boss battles or speeding up fights with enemies.
Personally I never had an issue with brush move recognition, but I played both the PS2 and Wii versions and use a Steam Controller for PC which is the closest to the Wii’s. Of all of them, analog sticks are probably the slowest, but keyboard control is pretty clunky for movement since it was intended for controllers. Combat on the Wii was something else entirely, it was genuinely meant for that I think as it has the blended analog stick + high speed but accurate input. For today, mouse input is very good as a very light trackball but so-so for a regular mouse - so the Steam Controller (or Deck these days) is a really good medium, or maybe the PS5 controller if you can use its middle touch thing somehow.
I’d say the only complaint I could make about the game is its pacing of the story. In terms of gameplay however, you take it at the pace you want to take it at. Don’t want to fight? Avoid the scrolls. But fighting can be so fast, over in just a few inputs. Only a couple seconds so sometimes the winning battle screens themselves feel like they take longer (but they can be skipped). The isometric style during the battle rewards spacing and the byproduct is the difference in how the movement feels - it also plays into Capcom’s general affinity for artificial difficulty, something like restrictions on camera movements and animation delays for Resident Evil and Monster Hunter. It’s asking how creative can you get in this situation with these limitations?
I think the best analogy for battles with this in mind is to imagine each moment you freeze as the perfect image captured by an artist, but that can only happen when the demons are visible to the human (after Ammy stuns them). With that in mind you stun all the enemies then finish them in one fell swoop!
The game does have some pacing issues in the early game that could have been fixed by allowing to speed up if not skip cutscenes, but otherwise overall I think it nails the widening world adventure game for encouraging the player to really engage with the game engine and their wits to progress forward. I also think the early pacing does a lot for some of the revealing acts of the game, if it was fast and punchy the whole time then later elements like the events of the Ghost Ship of Heaven’s Gate would be less impactful than they are. The stakes start out low as you familiarize yourself and they ramp up as you hit act 2. From there it’s actually pretty easy to skip a lot of side missions as it streamlines you from there, unlike the early game where it can be harder to tell which quests main and side missions. Much like Twilight Princess where in the mid-late game it’s really encouraging you to continue forward but if you take some time to explore you get experiences you’d have missed - although granted Okami is a little less forgiving with the gifts, with the 99 beads being the prelude to korok seeds I swear…
Anyway lol, tl;Dr I agree about the pacing although I think it’s intentionally self indulgent on the story and the payoff is worth it and while the RPG elements you mentioned for battles are accurate, I would say that the speed and movement are more about spacing and timing. If you know the weak spot and the finisher, then each monster can be dealt with in 2 strokes, and placed well that can be the end of the fight right there.
Also not trying to discount your experience, just adding my perspective :)
I only played a couple hours yesterday, something like 5 games.
I like the gameplay: it’s relatively simple and for once my skills are not too shitty.
It seem to require quite a bit of cooperation and unfortunately, as I don’t have my group of friends anymore, I ended playing with randos which led to inconsistent games: one game I had a great team, the other we were too scattered to win.
Finally, I have to play a little bit more to form an opinion, but I’m afraid that the gameplay will be a bit too repetitive for me.
I've been grinding that Diablo 4 and enjoying it a lot.
After I finished the campaign, I made it to World Tier 4 (highest difficulty) pretty quickly, and I'm now level 97. I fulfilled my dream of becoming a bear that punches millions of demons, so that's pretty cool. Although I can't be a bear all the time though, which is pretty lame. In town, I'm forced to run around as a boring human.
The next season begins in 10 days, and I don't know if there's a short break in between. Level 100 should definitely be possible, and a few other "milestones," but I don't know if I manage to do everything I'd like to.
In Diablo 3, I'd usually play at the start of a season for a few weeks, and then take a break until the next one, so I never burned myself out on it. Since I started Diablo 4 at the tail end of the season, I'll probably end up playing a lot longer than I'd usually do, so burn out is definitely possible for me. A new character should hopefully freshen things up enough, and a friend might also play with me.
Network performance was much better this week, although there are still some hiccups here and there, mainly during the Legion events.
Unless they change it with the upcoming season, there's no downtime between seasons for Diablo 4 like there is with 3, but they do give you the whole season to sort through your inventory in the eternal realm instead of just 30 days.
You mean when your seasonal characters become non-season and your items are mailed to you? In the beginning I was sorting through stuff, still keeping some items, but later I just destroyed almost everything, since I don't play non-season anyway, so I'll probably do the same here.
It sucks, that there's apparently no rebirth feature, like D3 had. I liked playing essentially the same characters over and over again from level 1, and not having to delete them and make a new one.
I miss the rebirth feature as well. I've heard whispers and rumors that the devs may add it in the future since it's requested so much, but that's just hearsay.
Alan Wake 2. I’ll spare any commentary on all the things it does well and that make it a one of the most ambitiously distinctive (AAA) games…ever? because that’s been well covered.
On the other hand, I am kinda surprised that the combat is as… deficient as it is. I never liked the combat experience in the first game. I don’t like how the enemies were programmed to run off screen to the sides of view, because Alan isn’t nimble enough to pivot direction sufficiently to track multiple enemies, and it just felt cheap and frustrating. Dodging is clunky too.
Control was the next Remedy game I played, and I thought the combat in that game was fantastic. The gunplay felt right, and the paranormal powers were weighty and responsive. Even the levitate power looks and feels fantastic; the animation is super cool and I love watching it.
So I had high hopes for Alan Wake 2, but the combat again feels too imprecise and unbalanced. Dodging is still clunky, projectiles clip through objects, etc.
Oh well. It’s a bummer, but in a game like this it’s well overshadowed by the strengths.
It’s kinda insane how much people dismiss “System Shock.” It’s a serious bedrock of a title, so much of what we take as a given of games was really pioneered by LookingGlass. I think a big chunk of that was due to the gameplay not really holding up to modern times, but hopefully now that Nightdive’s remaster is out, more people can experience it and realize just how much of the game holds up.
Probably a close second is the original “Half-Life”, in terms of really cementing the story-based first person shooter, but I don’t think anyone is going to call Half-Life snubbed.
I loved the first level of System Shock, now that it's been modernized. Then I got to the second level, and resources were no longer scarce, and it didn't appear to be shaking up the formula from level to level, so now it feels like Doom with an inventory system rather than the games that took inspiration from System Shock.
Half-Life is still pretty great, but as far as organically teaching the player, it's far behind even its own sequel. There are a lot of cheap deaths that you just have to save scum your way through. My go-to example is that when Half-Life 1 introduces a sniper enemy, you see a hole in the wall that could look like a sniper's nest if I told you that they existed in the game and if you squint at it a little bit, so you just get shot in the back. In Half-Life 2, you emerge from Ravenholm, and a combine sniper with a laser sight is clearly trained on some escaping zombies, so that you know that snipers in sniper's nests are now a thing you'll have to contend with, and you get to observe it safely once before dealing with them in the game. That kind of thing. 90s PC games seemed to be worse at this than their successors and console games at the time.
Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Kirby Planet Robobot for the same reason: while not the most innovative games and not necessarily my favorites in their respective franchises, they represent nearly flawless implementations of their respective franchise’s ideas.
Sometimes I feel like Mario and a couple popular indie games are the only platformers that get taken seriously honestly.
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Aktywne