Topic: Playstation 4 Backloggery and most wanted!

@themcnoisy Bloody hell, heart surgery’s no small thing! Glad to hear you’re doing better, it just wouldn’t be the same without you.

@themcnoisy Heart attacks are awful. Almost killed my mother.

Glad to hear you're in a better place at the moment.

@Voltan @render @Th3solution @nessisonett @Ralizah @Keith_Zissou cheers team. Real sorry for my cranky comments as well ROFL 🤣. But yeah loads better now, I'm going to play more and more games, so it's good to be back. Hopefully this next few weeks goes great and we all have a boss Chrimbo!

@themcnoisy Brother, I'm so pleased to see that you've pulled through such an ordeal, and that everything went as well as it could for you back there! As somebody with heart issues, I can understand the rollercoaster you've just been on, and wholeheartedly sympathise (pun semi-intended). It's great to see you posting again; as others have said, this place wouldn't be the same without you.

And thank you for the invitation to play Borderlands 2 the other day, as well. I really wish I could join you, but unfortunately I didn't claim the game when it was free with PS Plus. We'll have to sync our backlogs at some point, and find something else we can conquer together!

@RogerRoger sounds like a plan Rog. Currently away and having a break. I had to have a balloon put into my groin to get into an artery to open it up and get rid of buildup there. They couldn't go in through my neck as I've had issues with my thyroid which is due to have radioactive iodine treatment next year. So yeah I'm feeling like 100x better now, I can't really describe the change. Always lethargic, struggling to even get up, work was a nightmare. Now I'm buzzing, everything feels great again

How are you anyway bro? Up to much?

@themcnoisy Sounds like they put you through the wringer, but I guess you can't argue with the results! I'm real glad to hear all that has paid off, and fingers crossed for that further treatment, too. I'll bet your family are relieved to have you back at full strength!

I'm okay enough, thanks. Been on a bit of a bumpy road of late, but it's all surmountable stuff and knowing that, even when you're right in the middle of it, helps. As does gaming!

@RogerRoger Great to hear from you Rog, I will find a game we can play together. Maybe overcooked?

@themcnoisy It's not in my Library, but it's also frequently on sale, so I'll keep an eye out!

Since my last post, I've:

Purchased:

Fatal Frame V: Maiden of Black Water (NS)
Pokemon Shining Pearl (NS)
Shin Megami Tensei V, both digitally and physically via the Fall of Man Edition (NS)
Tetris Effect (NS)

Played:

God of War (completed and platinumed)
The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve (3 out of 5 cases down)
Shin Megami Tensei V (43 hours and more than halfway through at this point)
Tetris Effect (completed the Journey mode a second time on Switch, and have also returned to the PS4 version since to chase more trophies)

For the next few months, I plan to:

• Finish Shin Megami Tensei V
• Finish The Great Ace Attorney 2
• Play and finish Shadow of the Colossus on PS4 as part of the PushSquare Game Club playthrough
• Log at least twenty more hours into Monster Hunter Stories 2
• Log at least twenty hours into Pokemon Shining Pearl
• Start a new game of some sort. I always do, as the allure of trying out new games is strong. And, by "new," I of course mean something that I bought at an unreasonably high price and have allowed to sit rotting in my library for months/years on end

Planned Purchases:
Pokemon Legends: Arceus (NS) at the end of January 2022. Nothing before then. Hopefully. I'd like for my backlog to actually go DOWN at some point.

@themcnoisy Damn son, I only just saw your posts in here! Good to hear you’re on the mend after they had to “cut you open and tinker with your ticker”.

@Thrillho my own fault mate, years of excess wouldn't change it though other than the Papa John's.

@Ralizah have you played Tetris Effect in VR?

@themcnoisy Nope. It's very tempting, but it would also required hundreds of dollars worth of equipment.

Backlog

• Returnal
• Hollow Knight
• Deathloop
• Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut
• Hitman 2
• Horizon Zero Dawn Frozen Wilds
• Disco Elysium
• Persona 5 Royal
• Ratchet & Clank: A Rift in Time
• Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze (Switch)
• Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney (Switch)

Not started

• Spyro 2
• Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All (Switch)

Most wanted

• Death Stranding Director's Cut
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
• It Takes Two
• Final Fantasy VII Intergrade
• Psychonauts 2
• Nier Replicant
• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
• SMT V (Switch)

(Help, I want too much!)

@Kidfried Finally finished Ace Attorney, eh? Did you end up enjoying it?

@Ralizah Yea, I enjoyed it, but I would have liked the story to be a bit more ambitious than it was now. I wouldn't name it one of my favorite VN's.

Also, finishing games on my Switch just takes a lot of time, because 85% of my playtime is in public transit. And there just isn't too much of that going on these days.

@Ralizah You wrote that you want to log 20 more hours into Monster Hunter Stories 2, so I'm assuming you've already played the game for a bit? What are your thoughts on it so far? I'm personally not a fan of the mainline MH games but the Stories spinoffs have always interested me, although the first one seemed a bit too simple for my taste. Is the sequel any better?

@LtSarge I think I got about 20 hours in before stopping earlier in the year. It's fun. I also wasn't... a massive fan of the first game on 3DS, and really didn't like the battle system. The battle system in the sequel isn't overhauled or anything, but they made a few alterations (mainly UI related, I believe) that made it easier for me to enjoy. The big upgrade in this one is the presentation: it has lovely art design and the character models are more proportional. Characters in general are older in this one as well: the original had a strong "kid's game" vibe to it that's mostly missing from the sequel.

Even more than the original, this often feels like it tries to replicate aspects of the mainline MH games in an RPGish, turn-based environment.

I definitely wouldn't call it overly simple, as systems are layered on as the game goes on that adds a strong level of depth to the monster collection elements.

SMT is more my jam, and for a game with "Stories" in the title, it sure didn't have a strong sense of narrative to it in the 20 hours I played, but it's a beautiful, well-crafted monster-collecting JRPG that I'm eager to play further into. I've said this before about SMT V, but it's true here as well: if Pokemon games had half the level of technical ambition that MHS2 does, people would be freaking out.

Performance could probably be better on Switch, though. The framerate is all over the place, and notably choppy in the game's second area. Nothing game-breaking, but some people are more intolerant of performance problems than others. "Big" games on Switch usually target lower resolutions, but MHS2 is 720p undocked and 900p docked. This makes it VERY pretty, especially in handheld mode, but I'd have taken a softer image if it meant fewer performance dips.

Really, had they lowered the resolution and capped the framerate at 30fps, it'd probably be really close to a perfect match for the hardware.

@Ralizah I see, it sounds like a decent game overall then but maybe not something I should get ASAP. I'd definitely like to give it a shot if I ever find it for a cheap price as I love monster-collecting JRPGs and there aren't that many of them on the Switch. Too bad about the performance, I'm guessing it won't get fixed with a patch seeing as how the game has been out for a while now.

@LtSarge Probably not. All these developers choosing uncapped framerates for Switch games is a bit baffling to me (although hopefully this means they'll all be running beautifully on either an upgraded Switch or the eventual successor), but otherwise they made a conscious decision to prioritize visual fidelity over framerate. Like I said, it's hardly unplayable, but unless portability is important to you, the PC version might be the way to go.

As someone who plays across systems past and present, many of which rock major games that run far worse than most Switch games, I'm not too fussed about it either way.

@Ralizah Yeah I mean, I don't mind certain games having worse performance as long as I get to play them on the Switch. But it's indeed weird that a lot of third-party Switch games have uncapped framerates. While I was looking up information about the performance for NEO: The World Ends With You on Switch, there were some people saying the exact same thing you did, i.e. that developers are leaving framerates uncapped for a potential Switch Pro.

And honestly, I think that's such a dumb reason. I just don't like how we live in a time when you have to constantly do research about which console version of a game is the best one. This is especially annoying for a person like me who doesn't buy newer iterations of the same system. I tend to buy most games on PS4 as it's the most reliable one, but then sometimes there will be games that run better on Xbox One (Guardians of the Galaxy is a recent example since it has a lower resolution on Xbox One and therefore a more steady framerate) or games that just run absolutely poorly on base PS4 compared to PS4 Pro. So I have to go watch 20 minute videos on YouTube of Digital Foundry looking at the same game on PS4, PS4 Pro, Xbox One, Xbox One X, PS5 and Series X and it's just insane to me how many versions there has to be of one single game. I just want to go back to the good old days of buying one version of a game and knowing that it will run well on the system I have. Obviously if you own a PS5 or Series X then you're fine, but in five years we're going to have four more iterations of consoles and then these people will have the same issue as I have right now.

So if Nintendo decides to release a Switch Pro then I'm done, I just can't handle so many different iterations of the same systems I own. It just never feels like I can buy a console today and expect it to be properly supported for the next six years anymore. If I buy a PS4, then a PS4 Pro will come out three years later. If I buy a PS4 Pro, then a PS5 will come out four years later. It just never ends.

Apologies for veering off towards a rant there but it's something that's been bugging me lately, especially as Black Friday deals have gone live and I've been deciding which version of games I want to get.