Topic: What PS4 Games Are You Currently Playing?

While I'm waiting for a Sekiro sale, I restarted my Nioh game. I forgot how great the game is. I never did finish the game before so I'm 3/4 into the game and dying frequently, but still having fun. I feel my ninja build is a bit too squishy, but it compares well to bloodborne, where more than 2 hits and you are dead. The amount of customization and weapon choices is fantastic. I feel like this game was missed by many because it wasn't a Fromsoftware game. In my opinion this game is on par with any Fromsoftware title.

What Remains of Edith Finch. Finished the first major flashback (if it can even be called that), and just found a secret exit in the pink bathroom, and decided that was probably a good place to stop. It's not very far in, but my impressions of this game... aren't very positive so far. The game is plagued by framerate issues on the base PS4 (and I'm not usually bothered by that sort of thing), with a ton of really obvious pop-in during scenes with an emphasis on nature. I knew it was a walking sim, but I still have to question why games like this even exist: Gone Home, if nothing else, was clever in constructing a story from environmental and second-hand clues. Edith Finch has none of that subtlety, and instead just forces you ahead down a linear path as a long-winded narration spills over the scenery. I feel like this is the sort of game made by people who don't actually care about the gaming medium and just failed to break into fields they would have preferred, such as film or animation.

I was looking forward to seeing what Molly Finch's backstory was like, but we were just treated to a really random series of vignettes where a disturbed child fantasizes about killing and eating everything. You turn into different animals briefly, which might have been interesting if they didn't control like absolute garbage (in fairness, my problems with the shark segment were my fault: I didn't realize the animal was propelling itself through the water at first, and so you can imagine my frustration when the game barely responded to me using two sticks at once to try and swim while looking around... turns out all I had to do was steer the dag-nab thing!). The worst was the octopus, which was just infuriatingly un-intuitive to control.

I'll give the game points, though, for that absurd sequences where your shark is suddenly flopping down a hill.

As a side note, it was amusing to look at the books on the shelves in the house and see so many I've actually read. Very literary hipster-y selection of books, though, especially with stuff like Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest. It's like they google searched for weird, postmodern fiction to include. I half expected to see a copy of House of Leaves adorning the shelves. I guess that would have been too obvious, though.

@Ralizah Im not a big fan of walking sims either. I thought of maybe giving this a quick look, but your comments stopped that. However I did enjoy Unfinished Swan. The story was OK, but the way it was told had me hooked. Thanks for saving me some time.

@Elodin I finished this morning and posted my full impressions in the Recently Beaten thread, if you're interested. It... definitely has its moments. It's not a great game, but I also wouldn't warn people off playing it, and I enjoyed it more as it went on.

Also, keep in mind, I'm VERY intolerant of walking sims and "art" games in general. Stuff like Hohokum, Journey, Abzu (shudders), etc. are among my least favorite games of all time.

@Ralizah hmm maybe a second look then thanks

Well, since I'm playing on my PS4 now anyway, I decided to start playing another game in my PS+ backlog: Furi.

I've beaten the first two bosses now.

The game is awesome. And ridiculously challenging. But not in a way that makes me want to stop playing. I really, really like the synth-heavy soundtrack.

@Ralizah that's a good game, yes. Love the music too. Never gotten further than the fourth boss, though.

A week or two ago I was expressing on the forums that I was feeling a smidge of gaming apathy. I’ve read comments from posters over the years which describe having the same issue of not being able to be as excited about playing.

For me it was that I felt bogged down by so many long-winded games and was having trouble finishing them. So I’ve been intermittently playing shorter experiences. I’ve tried some different games and at present I settled into a nice rhythm with Injustice 2, and I continue to like the game. I can play short or long bursts. There is oodles of content, but it’s bite sized enough to not feel daunting. I really enjoy learning about so many DC characters that I didn’t even know existed. My new favorites that I never knew before are Blue Beetle, Brainiac, Black Canary, and Starfire. I have no idea if their comic book counterparts are as interesting and so spiffily designed as their Injustice renditions, but I am definitely hoping to see some of these in the DCU movies someday. Part of the problem with DC films is probably their propensity to rehash the same characters over and over. I love Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Joker, but there is a lot of good stuff here to explore instead of doubling down every few years on Batman.

Anyways, playing Injustice 2 got me comfortable enough that I was ready to play a longer epic again, so I have finally resumed Persona 5 after being on hiatus for a long time. It took a little getting warmed up to it, but I’m having great fun with it again. It still has the style and flair that I remember, and the turn-based combat is fun in the classic jrpg kind of way. After being away from it for a while, I do have some complaints though. First, the lack of save options in the palaces is annoying. It’s part of why I stopped playing in the middle of the third palace. You never know where a safe room will show up and it can sometimes be hours and hours until you find one. It limits my gaming session options. During the social sim parts there are many opportunities to save, but it’s drastically different in the places. And my second gripe is the hiding options in the palaces. You can jump from cover to cover, but you can’t rotate the camera while your in cover and so you sometimes can’t see when you can ambush an enemy, so I end up getting surrounded a lot. The movement around the palaces just feel a bit dated and awkward.
Other than that, I’m looking forward to progressing this game with seemingly no end. 😜

@Kidfried Lost interest, or you deliberately stopped playing it?

@Th3solution Despite its length, Persona 5 is a very segmented experience, so don't feel pressured to take it all in at once. Even playing a single day is a good bit of progress. I wouldn't stop in the middle of a palace, but otherwise, it should be easy to take it in bits and pieces.

@Ralizah Didn't deliberately stop. Just too many cool games releasing at the time!

Your post made me consider picking it back up again even!

Really like the games controls, and Nioh has been off-putting lately.

@Ralizah Yeah, that rings true — I had no problem stopping here and there during the story and social modes. It’s easy to take a break for a few weeks and come back. But the palaces require effort to navigate and they seem to be getting more and more complex. So yes, I made the mistake of stopping in the middle of a palace and that was what made it so hard to go back. I’m finishing up the palace now and should be back on track for a while.

@Th3solution That kind of put me off anything that prevents you from saving for large chunks of the game. Seems to be most common in JRPGs but also in games such as Destiny, The Division and Monster Hunter World.

@Th3solution Blue Beetle is awesome. I'd never seen him before playing Injustice 2, had no idea who he was, but he quickly became one of my favourites. As did the fire guy, what's his name... Firestorm, that's the chap. Both of them were fun to play as, and had charming personalities (at least as far as their representation in the game went; no idea about what they're like in the wider DC universe).

@JohnnyShoulder Yeah, it’s a strange combination in Persona 5. While outside a palace you can literally save after every single decision you make and the game gives you like 16 save slots so it’s easy to rotate around and go back if you didn’t like a decision. But in the palace it all depends on if you take the right paths to get to one of just a couple save points. Interesting to hear that Monster Hunter World is plagued by poor save mechanic, as I have been curious if I would like it. I played the demo and it seemed a little too overwhelming.

@RogerRoger Yeah, I love Blue Beetle’s character design. And his boyish personality is reminiscent of Peter Parker / Spider-Man.
It’s interesting to see how Injustice 2 portrays the characters. Being a casual fan of DC only, I know only the movies and some of the TV. In the game some characters appear to be ripped straight from their respective movies - like Harley Quinn, Black Manta, and especially Enchantress, whose mortal version is clearly a likeness of Cara Delavigne in Suicide Squad. Then other characters look and act nothing like the movie ones - like Deadshot, Aquaman, Bane (although they seemed to have copied the voice acting of Tom Hardy) and of course Superman.
I definitely need to do some research to learn the difference between Captain Cold and Mr. Freeze, and between Supergirl and Powergirl. Also, why in the world would they include Black Adam but omit Shazam?! That’s my one disappointment with the roster. That and Lex Luthor. He was in the first game, but not this one.

@Th3solution Have you actually played the first Injustice's storyline? Because it contains some of the answers to the questions you're asking. I won't say which, in case you haven't and I inadvertently give away spoilers.

I think they go for the line of least resistance with some characters. Enchantress won't be known to a wider audience, beyond her appearance in the Suicide Squad film which, I think, was the big DC film right around the time Injustice 2 came out, so it made sense to make her familiar to as many people as possible. Aquaman, meanwhile, had been well-established in the first Injustice, which was released before Jason Momoa was cast in BvS, so they couldn't exactly change him (and the story of both games kinda demands Superman be very, very different to any pre-existing version, although the first Injustice does have Man of Steel outfits for both Superman and General Zod). Same with Wonder Woman, too.

Many of the B-listers are featured in the DC television shows. I know that Captain Cold is the nemesis of the Flash, and has appeared multiple times in that show, despite never having watched it. If there's a difference between him and Mr. Freeze beyond "Flash needed his own cold-based villain" then I couldn't even begin to guess! But I guess they could pull from that cupboard as well, and still trade on a little bit of name-recognition.

@RogerRoger I did play the first game, many moons ago. A quick check of my trophy list shows that I played and got the silver trophy for beating the story in late 2014. My memory is not that long apparently. That or it didn’t stick with me, which is not unusual for video game stories. I find most gaming plots forgettable and I just store them in my short term memory bank. I seem to recall something about Superman becoming evil from an alternate universe, or some such. Basically it seemed like a story fabricated just so random heroes and villains could fight against each other — basically a means to an end. But that shows what little I know, as apparently there was some actual important plot points there that I flippantly glazed over. Thanks for the heads up and I’ll google a summary or watch a YouTube video rehash of the first game.

@Kidfried Yeah, just beat the third boss. Thankfully, the game does control very well, and whenever I felt like I wasn't pulling off the moves I wanted to, it was purely because of my reaction times. The available attacks and mechanics, while somewhat simple, are all extremely useful and flexible, and, with some sense of timing, matches start to look like something out of DBZ, but, and this is the brilliant part, you feel like you're in full control of your character.

I obviously have to play more before I can say much, but I could see this being a favorite. While I'm not usually a huge action game person, I'm really liking this title's almost Punch-Out-esque focus on rhythm and reading enemy patterns.

Oh, and there's a cute little Metal Gear Solid 3 reference in the third boss fight. Wasn't expecting that, and it's organic enough that it would be easy to not even notice it AS a reference.

@Th3solution That is one of the things that did my head in about Final Fantasy 15, not being able to save in the dungeons. I lost a good hours play in my first one cos I had to do real life stuff and didn't realise you could not save in a dungeon.
With Monster Hunter World you can't save whilst on a hunt and what is worse is that you are on a timer for most missions so you can't even find a quite corner or pause the game. I get that is when you are supposed join up with other people online, but that was never my intention to play that way and should not be punished for playing solo.

Haven't spent as much time as I'd like with Team Sonic Racing yet, but I've spent enough to know that I'm really gonna enjoy the game going forward, I think.

Whilst I haven't noticed any terrible performance issues during a race, the game did freeze on me during a results screen, forcing me to close it and have to replay the race, as it hadn't auto-saved. I didn't mind, though, because it meant I noticed the rather unique choice of having to push square on an Adventure Mode race to see the story; if you just press X as you'd normally expect to, you skip straight to the event itself. Which will be very handy for replaying things to earn a higher score because, whilst I do quite like the story, its simplistic slideshow presentation makes it highly skippable.

Beyond that, it's just a blast. The courses are great, although I've noticed more than a few are returning from previous All-Stars Racing games (three thusfar, out of the six I've seen) and the gameplay is fantastic. I've really taken to the team mechanic; the A.I. seems smarter than I'd feared, I'm offered plenty of useful items, they drive sensibly when leaving a trail for me to slipstream, and they've yet to let me down. I'm only playing on Normal, though.

The music is also as good as you'd expect, but it's the sound design that I love. The voice acting is great (way better than some of the script deserves) and all the original sound effects are on-point. When you're behind the wheel, it's exactly what you want in a kart racer; colourful, chaotic and a little cheesy.

In other words, it's very Sonic.

On the seventh boss in Furi now, and boy, this game is kicking my butt. It's addictive, though. I absolutely love how dynamic the fights get. The fight with The Song was a highlight.

@Frigate I genuinely don't understand why changing license boards wasn't in TZA in the first place. The beginning of the game is way too soon for the player to make an informed and permanent choice