Topic: What PS4 Games Are You Currently Playing?

@Thrillho I was going to give you some tips, like emptying cemeterys and the mass transit commercial meta. But you seem to be doing great!

There is a terrible trophy though which I've only just noticed - experience 1001 in game nights - damn that's going to be a time sink. The day / night cycle runs at its own pace rather than based on the calender, maybe 1 cycle every in game month? Maybe it's even less.

@themcnoisy Any good tips would be welcome as I feel like I’m still winging it a bit! It would be cool to see any parts of your city you’re proud of too.

My only problem is that, like when I used to build houses on The Sims, I am so bad creatively at these things so I really had to force myself not to just make everything in a grid system. Some of the curved residential areas I have look quite neat.

My problem at the moment is that I used the smallest roads possible for almost everything to start with so traffic is a nightmare. I might just have to rebuild a lot of the original districts.

The big issue at the moment is that lots of my service buildings keep getting abandoned and I’m not sure why. I guess I just need more residents and better educated ones in particular.

@themcnoisy @Thrillho I enjoyed what I played, I gave up when my city kept needed water and electricity even though I had plenty to go around. You can speed up the game too.

@themcnoisy Oh yeah, that trophy was the one I mentioned before when you said you were going for the platinum. Lots of people on playstationtrophies saying they just left the game running overnight which is a ridiculous thing to have to do in order to get a trophy..

Having a blast with Spiderman. It's great fun just swinging about the place and looking moody on top of massive skyscrapers. I've not quite got the hang of the combat yet though. There are these bits where you have to detonate a bomb and then these snipers pop up. Those guys are a crack shot!

@JohnnyShoulder @Thrillho Press triangle and select info views. From here you can see the electricity grid of the city. So what is and isn't connected.

Also under info views you can select an ore icon. This brings up a filter which shows where ore, oil and the best farm land are located.

Road Heirarchy is the most important aspect of the game. You want as few crossroads as possible and to use roundabouts for traffic flow.

Death happens way too regularly in Cities, I have over 50 crematoriums! Make sure this is front and centre of each new section!

Make districts with different specialisations and can pet ownership as it causes too much garbage accumulation early doors. Bring it back in when you have specialises residential areas 10-12 hours into the game.

Ground and noise pollution are the biggest killers in the game. There are policies which can mitigate these issues such as having only residential traffic in some areas and having a time curfew on loud activities.

Start a metro system early, this helps bulk up your commercial network and is five time more efficient than bus routes which also clog up the roads.

There is a free dlc on the store for 3 chinese style buildings including a panda conservation area. Useful when you want a bit of happiness.

Press the touch pad and it removes the HUD and gives you an amazing view of your city.

As soon as it becomes available swap your sewage outflow pipes for the sewage treatment plants. Always make sure these are downstream towards the edge of your city.

15-20 hours in put a toll booth on the cim entree points into your city!

@themcnoisy Yeah I did all that, but there always seemed to be a black hole where electricity or water could get to 🤷‍♂️

@themcnoisy Interesting, one piece I read said to save metro systems until later as they’re expensive to build and maintain. I might have to have a play with it later.

I’m sure I could optimise bus routes too as they’re mostly random at the moment.

@Thrillho With metros you don't need a big looping system like a train track, you can have a central loop and individual tracks to regions like a sun pattern. Bear in mind my experience is limited to maybe 7 proper games across platforms and in no way am I an expert in any way rofl. What you do get with experience is a better understanding of what you can push, as there's no undo tool - that only comes with learning from mistakes. One mistake I never made until this current game is flooding part of my city with no immediate answer, I had placed over 10 sewage centres in a similar place over time, the outflow was so crazy like a monsoon it crept into my city when I was building in another corner and washed away hundreds of people and buildings. It was a ton of fun learning that and in the end I had to sculpt the land down and move 50% of the outflow units completely as building mountains as a barrier kept the lower land filled with water!

@JohnnyShoulder could be worth streaming that mate and I could help you out. With electric you may not be producing enough electricity, you need a lot of windmills or coal plants. Wind has its own filter in the info views section so too water usage. Otherwise on certain maps with more hills you need water towers as the water can't push its way up.

@themcnoisy Thanks for the offer, but I've not played it in months and am done with the game. Iirc the area was pretty flat and I had more than enough coal plants and water towers to provide enough water and electricity. I had it covered with pylons and water pipes too, but there always seemed to be on or two building not getting any.

@thiz Death Stranding, if you thought Spiderman was good looking you are in for a treat!

Funny you mention the by the numbers game design of Spiderman (which I thought was great). Im currently playing Watch Dogs 2, which is random and rubbish platforming puzzles mixed in with a dreadful story. Its trying to be edgy but fails almost everywhere. All the hackers in the world are in San Francisco apparently and antagonists hide artifacts in air conditioning units. Unlike spiderman WD2 has a standard movement scheme and suffers accordingly, using fast travel to navigate more so than any game this generation.

I'm having fun though and some of the abilities are neat.

It’s been great fun watching my mum playing L.A. Noire. We somewhat accidentally watched 3 noir series at the same time, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, Perry Mason and Babylon Berlin, so playing this at the same time has been quite interesting. I love how there are no ‘wrong’ answers, you might mess up an interview but the case just takes a different turn. She can’t drive at all though, it’s hilarious. I think Rockstar games seem to be a good fit though, they have an emphasis on narrative and they’re rooted enough in reality that they feel a bit more serious than your typical JRPG or your gamer game for true gamers.

I finished the main story of Death Stranding last night and now I don't know what to play!

Funds are limited so can't buy Ghost of Tsushima or Final Fantasy VII (both of which I am really keen to play) or any new game for that matter.

There are a few games that I'd like to play again at some point (HZD, RDR2, God of War) but decided to wait on until I have a PS5.

I have some games in my backlog but starting any of the below after finishing both Death Stranding and The Last of Us Part II in recent weeks feels like a tad underwhelming.

Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order
Shadow of the Colossus
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
BioShock Infinite

I am sorely tempted to play The Last of Us again or maybe even GTA V. Not sure which though.

I've been spoilt!

@Col_McCafferty I would play Shadow of the Colossus, it is not that long and a quite different experience to the last two games you have played. Well I assume so with Death Stranding as I've not played it!

@JohnnyShoulder Thanks for the recommendation!

👍

I have decided to play GTA V again and maybe The Last of Us as well.

Will definitely give Colossus a spin at some point.

@Col_McCafferty All four of those games are ringers in my opinion! I thoroughly enjoyed all of those. But I agree, Shadow of the Colossus would be a good palate cleanser to the traditional story driven action combat that you’ve been experiencing. It’s a little more artsy and unconventional, but it’s probably one of my favorite games of all time.
Shadow of the TR was probably the best of this reboot trilogy imo. I loved how there was renewed focus on the exploration aspect and the tombs, and less of the hunting and supply gathering of the last game.
Jedi Fallen Order is a solid fun time and if you’re a Star Wars fan you should enjoy the care taken to create a consistent experience. Wielding a lightsaber is quite satisfying.
BioShock Infinite is was one of my very favorite PS3 games and I was just singing it’s praises over on the Game Club thread. If you’ve invested in the series by at least playing (and hopefully enjoying) the first BioShock, then it’s a very satisfying conclusion and has a really interesting narrative, imo.

@Th3solution Oh I've played the first two BioShock games (PS Plus baby!) and really enjoyed them.

The first is a bonafide classic with a brilliant story, good combat but annoying hacking puzzles!

The second is good, decent story, slightly better gameplay but improved hacking system.

I decided to go back to GTA V (I managed to 'unlock' this mission that was halting my program) and finish that. It's mindless fun!

I'm also going to replay TLoU again, the first one that is not the sequel.

Thanks for your input though, much appreciated!

😆

@thiz It's interesting to see you rave about Spider-Man: Web of Shadows as that's the only major Spidey game I've been avoiding during my recent "play the whole darn franchise from start to finish" efforts. From my research, I gather that it runs poorly on PS3 and that its morality system is somewhat limited. I also made the mistake of playing its PSP counterpart release, the so-called Amazing Allies Edition, so I was happy to walk away from it and continue with the games I've tracked down thusfar. I might give it another look now.

This afternoon I started the PS4 port of the original Final Fantasy VII.

I'm really, really glad that I want to experience this legendary game so badly because, if I didn't, I think I'd be regretting my purchase by now. I get it; something from 1997 was never gonna blow me away today, and I'm giving the story some development time because it really throws you in at the deep end, but wow, just... I mean, look, I'm not a big turn-based RPG guy anyway. Stats bore me, inventory-juggling bores me, team balancing bores me, waiting my turn bores me and, outside of books and this website, reading bores me. I also hate random encounters. Why the heck am I playing this?!

Because everybody who talks about it says that, by the end, they're blown away. My best friend, who's a few years younger than me and has little patience for retro gaming, played it for the first time a couple months ago and said it was "absolutely stunning" upon completion. I've dabbled in Final Fantasy before, but only with short demos or by watching others play a bit. I thought I should give it my best shot.

So I'm stuck here, mashing the cross button, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I wish it'd hurry up. Disjointed text-only dialogue, a plodding pace, surrealist artistic choices and cookie-cutter characters... let's just say that some seriously on-point music will only carry me so far.

Looking forward to coming back here in a couple weeks and laughing at how wrong I was, and tagging the temporarily-absent @Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy as promised!

@RogerRoger And now you see why I wasn’t convinced by Remake considering it’s just Midgar, despite being a huge huge fan of the original 😂😂