Topic: What PS3 game(s) are you currently playing?

@KilloWertz yeah don’t get me wrong, I put around 8 hours in yesterday and plan on putting a similar amount in today… I wouldn’t be doing that if I didn’t think it was worth it. I’m just surprised by how antiquated it all feels. As you probably remember, I spent much of last year playing various 7th gen games but I don’t think any of them have aged in quite the same way that this has.

@graymamba Yeah I do remember. And you are right. It is a game that has had some parts age kind of poorly, but enough of it remains timeless in a sense where it doesn't really matter. Unlike some games where they aren't easy to go back to anymore.

It doesn't hurt that Morrigan is one of the best female characters of all time.

@KilloWertz funnily enough I’m currently watching season 2 of Farscape, so when im not hearing Claudia Black play Morrigan, I’m seeing her play Aeryn.

@graymamba I have all the seasons on Blu-ray but never did watch it all.

Also, in other words, then you can think of her before she finally has started to look old-ish.

@KilloWertz never did find her attractive tbh… even when she was young. Real solid actress though, I’m always pleased when I see her face in a movie or hear her voice in a game.

@graymamba But if you never found her attractive, then why were you always pleased to see her face?

You are right though. I've always enjoyed her voice work in games and the bit of in front of the camera acting I've seen.

Been enjoying the dwarven quest line in Dragon Age: Origins today… in all honestly it might be my favourite portrayal of dwarves in all of fantasy (books, film, tv or games). They really took a deep dive into the dwarves, much deeper than with the elves etc. Between this and the mages quest lines, the quality is very high fair play.

Is Mafia 2 one of the best PS3 titles that ever released? 😱

I'm almost in shock how good it is (and how very KCD it is) and I'm already annoyed that I've missed an emergent moment and acompanying trophy 🤦‍♂️ (i'm less bothered about the actual trophy than the moment itself)

Basically, someone's car had broken down and the husband was shouting and being abusive to his wife so I gave him a good old smack upside the head. But I've now found out you can fix the car, and I guess... mechanically cuckold the fella 😂 that is insane (and 100% Vavra game design)

I did manage to do a main quest 100% right which meant disabling an alarm (unmarked objective) and not killing guards etc (the guy quickly tells you he'd prefer it that way, but it isn't written as an actual objective either) but as I was exploring every inch of the building anyway and the safe had a massive flashing beacon on it it seemed obvious to not open it at that point. This is what popped the trophy that made me peer into the trophy list and learn about the one I had missed earlier too.

God, it's a well designed and highly detailed little game. And I bet it's a fun little platinum for those that like that kind of thing too.

I believe Mafia 3 (which I liked for it's story much more than the gameplay/design of quests. Bad districts. Bad, bad design) had nothing to do with 2K Czech, but soon after 2K Czech was absorbed into Hangar 13 anyway, so I am really hopeful that there are some devs knocking around with experience from Mafia 2 working on the Mafia games from this point on.

There's just something so damn pleasing about the game design, and if The Old Country has even a bit of this type of game design, on top of the writing, themes and tone, that have always been consistently strong through all 3 titles, it's going to be a good'un.

My advice to all PushSquarers: Stop what you're doing and play some Mafia 2!

Timeless classic

It's actually funny looking back at reviews of the time, vs players today enjoying it. I think at the time everyone was hung up on it not being GTA, a massive open world etc, but now here is this game that you can just rattle off a chapter of and enjoy it for what it is. It's kind of refreshing and it's good points far outweigh any limitations it may have had.

The Dragon Age: Origins replay continues. A very different experience this time than when I played it back on 360 at release… still enjoying it (more than I was initially expecting to be fair) but damn is there a lot of plates to keep spinning to get this plat 😅. Just finished what many people consider to be the buggiest and most annoying trophy in the game where you have to kill 1000 darkspawn. Now that might not seem a big thing but I’m right at the end of the game now and was only on 276… and there’s only so many more opportunities to get those kills. I literally spent my last two sessions farming one spot between an auto-save and a quest update. It’s a minor nightmare tbh because all logic has to go out the window as there is no indication that these kills are actually being counted… and even if they are, I don’t think my ps3 can count anymore 🤔. But after an incalculable amount of runs it finally popped ‘thank the maker’.

@Ravix I played it back when it released and quite liked it iirc… I enjoyed the remake of the original a fair bit more though if memory serves. Have you played the Mafia remake?

@graymamba yeah, finished Mafia I remake recently. I liked it, it looks pretty good as a remake, but there's just something unexplainably more pleasing about 2. It's just all the little details, I think, and it gives me more KCD vibes than Mafia 1. You can definitely see the ideas formulating on how to make the games more engaging with a bit more player freedom (kind of) it's not like it's an RPG or anything, but it has the same kind of spirit as one, I'm finding. I would love to have seen a full on Mafia (2k Czech) RPG.

Mafia 2 (judging by where I'm up to) also looks like it's going to have a segment "off the map" which is kind of a KCD calling card too. Where you are confined to one area and the open world is taken away from the player for a while. And for me, I love that in game design. And I know some people (impatient players) hate that kind of thing, so that makes me like it even more 😛

Will you be partaking in Mafia The Old Country at launch, or backlogging and playing in 7 years time? 🫣

@Ravix I was one of the minority that was pretty disappointed to hear that The Old Country wouldn’t be open world tbh. I’ll probably still play it at some point… but not in any crazy rush, so I doubt it’ll get played by 7 years time 😉

@Zazu yeah I’d be okay with wide-linear… though I have my doubts it’ll even have that level of scope what with the somewhat budget price announced. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see… but even if it does turn out to be extremely linear, I’ll probably still end up begrudgingly playing it at some point as I like third-person shooters.

@graymamba @Zazu

I seem to recall reading it was still the same kind of design as Mafia 1 & 2. But I'm not sure if it was developer talk or fan assumptions, so I won't state it as fact.

If they create the island and you can ride around it, but there is only ever one "next mission" it would still be cool. Although saying that, considering the Jungle segment in Mafia 3 (dlc?) was still really good, I think they could pull off the more linear style too. But I can't imagine the open island having invisible walls, or virtual stop signs like the Yakuza games. So if you have to go from A to B between tasks you'd assume you can go any way... maybe?

I too liked Mafia 3 more than most seemed to, but I definitely noticed the drag with the districts locking off progression. And the side content quest type was incredibly low quality. (DLC was better)

I'm still hoping for there to be a legit full fat Mafia 4 in development, too, but I don't think I'll cry if there isn't. It'd just be really, really nice if there was 😂 It is slightly strange that this one has the subtitle rather than the number though. It could just be to try and encourage new players, but I feel like they mentioned "the old country" a lot in the first two games, so it is probably something they always wanted to show which suggests it will written in a way that rewards Mafia 1 and 2 players more than newbies, with some tie ins or nods to those games at least.

@graymamba This is why I am glad I don't care about getting platinums. Whenever I do replay Origins (I played it back on my Xbox One X I believe) when I replay the whole series before I play The Veilguard, I expect to still enjoy it more consistently than you seem to have.

@KilloWertz we all take our satisfaction from where we can get it, I get mine from spinning metaphorical plates as a supplemental to simply gaming. When I simply gamed without considering trophies (basically 1983 - 2017), I was very casual and found I’d struggle to click with much, falling of most games out of boredom well before rolling credits. The meta of trophy hunting helped me connect with pretty much everything I play these days. Horses for courses 🤷‍♂️

@graymamba It's fine. You do whatever you want of course. It would take the enjoyment out of it for me to be doing things I know that are really annoying just to get the platinum, but we all are different. It honestly doesn't matter what I say.

@KilloWertz thanks… I’ll now return to spinning my metaphorical plates, which I’d placed on hold waiting for your say-so that it was okay to proceed 😉.

In all seriousness though, the things you see as annoying I don’t. When I get to a point where I have to farm a spot for a spell doing the same thing over and over, I actually find it quite meditative. Just stick a podcast on and drift away. The minor nightmare was more the uncertainty of whether what I was doing would actually work… which it ultimately did thankfully.

@graymamba @KilloWertz
I too am a trophy hunter, I do it for self satisfaction as I (mostly) don’t brag about them or are in any competition with other gamers.
Most games arent too much of a grind but if I like a game then I want to be pushed into playing it again, perhaps in a different way or difficulty (eg last of us on grounded is a totally different experience to easy/normal.

But whatever floats your boat I guess.

@CaptD yeah definitely more of a self-satisfaction thing for me too rather than a competition with other gamers.

I kinda treat every game as a new project (my psychological placement on the spectrum has always really engaged with the project mentality), so I always go through the same modus operandi of researching a game, then the trophy list, identifying any potential stumbling blocks like missables, difficulty-specific, multiplayer etc.

Then I map out my longterm plan of action to optimise the use of my time, including short term goals at the end of each sub-stage of the overall journey. It’s definitely not for everyone and am well aware how that would sound like the most boring thing in the world to many… but it works for me and I appreciate the aspects of planning and preparation almost as much as the actual game itself.

Going back to the Ratchet & Clank Future games and they bring me back such nostalgia, I wish they got ported physically to PS5, they are so good, but in the meantime having a blast with them on the PS3