@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Welcome back! So, as someone who never finished ToCS, how long do you figure you spent on it? And at what point in the game did you feel like it clicked from “pretty good” to “can’t wait to play again and can’t stop thinking about it between gameplay sessions.”?
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
There is a nice a little timer on the menu (That never stops ticking) so I can tell you @Th3solution I've spent about 85 hours on it. And I did use the PS4 version's turbo function in a number of places too to zip up my walking round places and speed through a few battles against weaklings.
As for your second question...
Chapter 1 & 2 was the nice little set up, easing you in and I was appreciating the world building but was merely sitting on "good".
It was after the 3rd chapter and started dropping some more intriguing developments where it was getting pretty good to me.
By the end of the 4th was where I was quite taken by it.
I'd already ordered the sequel by the time the 6th chapter came along and... Well I can't say too much more without dropping spoiler tags
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Okay - thanks. That’s consistent with what I’ve heard. And the word out there is that the series even gets better and better with each installment. So my being stuck on Chapter 2 sounds like I’m not far from a threshold of when it starts to really hook you, if I can push forward just a little more.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Kinda half and half? I do kind of want to laugh at various aspects of it (and plan to), but there's also some cool new monsters/redesigned monsters/interesting new weapons/interesting level design choices, etc. I'm keen on talking about.
There are also changes to the BFG Edition I want to explore, because I feel like they lead to the game having a bit of an identity crisis.
Oooooh ok then @Ralizah it sounds like an interesting one. I look forward to reading the eventual review then!
Does that mean you're going to do DOOM 2016 next whenever you decide to tackle another DOOM? Or are you going to play the DOOM mobile RPG's first? (They're real!)
Now that I've finished Cold Steel 1 I think this is a good time to go through DOOM 64 as a nice little palate cleanser. That way I'll finally be able to read your Doom 64 review properly too!
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy LOL I've heard about the DOOM RPGs, although I think they're iphone exclusive, and I'm an android user. Not that I'm keen on playing phone games anyway. I've tried, but... I need buttons!
My current plan for the rest of the year is:
DOOM 3 expansion content
Paper Mario: The Origami King (I'm probably 2/3rds of the way through it, although I'm playing it with my nephew, so it's a bit slow-going)
Astral Chain
Digital Devil Saga 2
DOOM 2016
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition
DOOM Eternal
I'll also probably nab Cyberpunk, but, like with The Witcher, I expect that playthrough to be months long.
Those are my prioritized games for the rest of the year, so other than Final DOOM, I should be fully caught up on the series by the end of the year. I'm generally not a huge fan of playing multiple games in one series over a short period of time, but DOOM games aren't terribly long, and I do like seeing how they evolve over time.
I think you'll probably dig DOOM 64. One of the only games I've ever immediately replayed after finishing.
Oh are they Apple exclusive? I'll admit I only knew that they existed and that was basically it @Ralizah 😅
I did play through six (maybe seven) levels of DOOM 64 when I went through it a little and I did enjoy what I'd tried so far. I'll probably restart it though when I play it in earnest.
As for Cold Steel 2... I might actually tackle Danganronpa 2 as well before diving into that. Depends on how quickly I get through DOOM 64 I think but it'll be soon for sure because of the free time I have at the moment.
September is going to be really hectic...
-EDIT-
Oh and a very good lineup on your part there Ral. Really looking forward to see what you think of Digital Devil Saga 2 but all the others sound quite interesting too!
I finished off Strider 2014 there, it was really quite good. A proper retro experience from beginning to end, difficult without feeling unfair and with plenty of collectibles. The final boss even inexplicably turns into a monster at the end. You then ride his burning corpse from space back down to Earth. Now that’s rad.
Woah, I got the under 4 hours trophy by the absolute skin of my teeth!
@Ralizah ...and, as somebody who recently completed it, I can't wait to read what you've got to say! Looking forward to the write-up (no pressure) and best of luck with those expansions.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Pretty sure. They're not on the Play Store, as far as I can tell. The one area where Apple dominates is in terms of the mobile games you can play on its platform. They also have access to Tanto Cuore, and a mobile port of Shin Megami Tensei. All of which never come to Android because of exclusivity agreements. -_-
Oh? What's happening in September?
Yeah, I'm looking forward to playing through the other half of DDS. I originally also wanted to fully beat Nocturne on my PS2 before SMT V arrived, but with the HD port coming, I can just play it through on my Switch.
@RogerRoger Yeah, I'm especially keen to see how our experiences compared.
Did you play through both expansions, or just RoE?
DOOM RPG was released in 2005 apparently! So... it might not actually be on any store now. There could be a port I suppose to more modern phones but I doubt it as it was done by EA and some other company.
I'm back in work at the start of September @Ralizah. The new school year is going to be... "Fun" 😅
I wonder if they're going to bring the DDS duology to Switch and PS4? Seems like an equally good fit to bring back and I'd totally repurchase those. Though that probably won't be for a while if it was.
... Not quite sure I'd want Raidou Kuzunoha though. That was a little ho-hum to me personally. Granted the second's supposed to be better but we never got that over here. Some nice music though as always!
Previously known as Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy
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"You don't have to save the world to find meaning in life. Sometimes all you need is something simple, like someone to take care of"
@Ralizah I played both expansions. Maybe I shouldn't have right after clearing the campaign, but it was one of those inescapable "if you don't now, you never will" moments for me.
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Just going back a few posts to @nessisonett and holy cow, that is cutting it close!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
Polished off L.A. Noire with my mum tonight. The ending was a little strange and rushed but we both really enjoyed playing it, it’s just a proper detective game despite us being crap at reading people. It’s a shame there’ll probably never be a follow-up, it had a lot of good ideas that just needed some more polish. The facial animations are better than any game I’ve ever seen as well, and this is a 9 year old game. The tech they used definitely holds up and the cast did a stellar job. Absolutely a game I would recommend as an experience.
@nessisonett One of the few games I have played twice, but not for the normal reasons. I was well into the last section of this game and not far from the end, but then my 360 got stolen with a few other things.
So my second playthrough was post-insurance claim on a new machine. Ironically, I was the victim of a crime whilst investigating (virtual) crimes myself
@stuzster That's so harsh, I'm real sorry to hear that... and yet, I can't help but chuckle at the irony!
But yeah, I agree with you and @nessisonett in praising L.A. Noire as it's the only Rockstar game I've actively enjoyed and become invested in. Its ending surprised me, too, with the third act starting to introduce those flashback payoffs which went in a totally different direction to what I'd expected; credit to them, though, because if I'd have known the type of person I was gonna be playing as beforehand, I might not have played it at all. I keep meaning to revisit it, and to appreciate its entire plot in context.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@stuzster Oh no, that’s both a massive shame and incredibly ironic! I think L.A. Noire shines in its immersion, the city is such a faithful recreation along with them having actual radio show clips from the 40s, the cars control like crap and most of the police are dodgy, racist or entirely incompetent. It’s a game I’d definitely play again and aim for the platinum.
In one of my more erratic gaming moments, I drifted away from the ‘flavor of the month’ and a game I seriously am loving, Ghost of Tsushima, to finish off my orphaned and forgotten playthrough of The Council.
I’m not entirely clear why I reopened this Pandora’s box of a game because I honestly forgot about it after casually placing it in the back of the cabinet like my little jar of marmite. “Maybe I’ll try this mixed experience again when I’m feeling adventurous...”
Well, for whatever reason, (and spoiler for those who’ve played it) and the only logical explanation is that a daemon possessed me and took over my thoughts to lead me to do this irrational act 😜 I was led to randomly click on the game in the waning moments of a difficult week. I think I felt the surge of satisfaction after finally completing Bloodstained recently and subconsciously gravitated to a game that I knew I was close to finishing.
I don’t think I played the game for at least 6 months, I’d guess. I enjoyed episode 1 (and I believe I left some early impressions somewhere) and episode 2 a little less so. By episode 3 I was feeling a little put off and struggled to even feel motivated to start episode 4, but I had the “well, I’ve invested this much time into it and I bought the full season so I might as well...” thoughts and I started the penultimate episode all those months ago, where I finally just stagnated and abandoned it in the first chapter of episode 4. And there it sat for ages until a few days ago when it was resurrected, and now, completed finally to strike off my backlog list. 🥳
I won’t make this into much of a proper review, but I’ll say that the game has its strengths. Obviously it has plenty of shortcomings too, and I would be hard pressed to endorse a recommendation to the average gamer. But the last few chapters actually got quite interesting and once I reached a certain point in the story (again, huge spoilers here —) when you discover the truth about Mortimer being a daemon and being Louis father that’s when it really made it worthwhile and I was excited to see how everything was going to play out. So the final episode, number 5, was not nearly as much a slog because I was honestly fascinated at what could transpire and how my choices could affect things.
And I’ll give the game credit here too — your choices do matter. They seem to matter quite a bit. In fact, I’m rather upset with myself because I got a rather disappointing ending. And it seems that I was headed towards it fairly early on by some of my decisions even in the first few episodes. As ‘multiple ending’ type of games do, there is diverging decisions that occur pretty late in the game too, but in this one, I was not able to try to get a good ending by simply going back an hour to the point of a binary decision and just replay the last hour to get a different outcome (I know because I tried). No unfortunately if I wanted a good ending, I was going to have to replay the darn thing from at least episode 2 onward. And the thought of that made me feel like I’d rather have marmite toast than that.
So in the end, I think that speaks for itself. In a game where you can choose from one of 3 original classes at first, has a pretty open decision making narrative as well as RPG mechanics to build an individualized build out of your talents and abilites .... yet it plays in such a clunky manner that it’s just not very re-playable. At least not for me.
The story feels glacial at points - seemingly going nowhere with nonsensical narrative arcs, and the puzzles are sometimes quite difficult. The game allows you to paint yourself into a corner if you don’t have the right abilities leveled up to more easily solve a situation or puzzle. Fortunately I never got stuck beyond progression, but it can be a little frustrating.
Anyways, it’s too bad, because the game innovates wonderfully. And everyone here knows how much I champion innovation in gaming. I can’t say I regret playing it or that I didn’t have some enjoyment from it, and like I say, the ending sort of makes all the lull in the middle worthwhile. All five seasons is probably about 15-18 hours of gameplay, so it’s not too long. So, if you like the ‘choose your own adventure’ style of story driven experience like Telltale and Life is Strange, yet have grown tired of their repetitive recipe and approach, then it’s worth a try for you. But Big Bad Wolf studio has some ironing out to do to make the gameplay more pleasing and the mechanics more passable before the next project (Season 2?)
Tagging @RogerRoger here on a separate post so you don’t accidentally see the spoilers in an email. I think a long time ago you had some level of interest in The Council and wanted to know my thoughts on it. 🙂
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
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