Topic: What PS5 Games Are You Currently Playing?

@nessisonett The Champers League money has gone to their head! The same happened to Liverpool when they started to be more successful.

This is the first time I've played it, so only saw what the game was like from a distance. It has been a pretty smooth experience so far and I've not seen any of the infamous bugs or glitches.

Games don't seem to take too long to get into online either. Think I saw a few weeks ago that it was one of the most popular FTP games on PSN?

I’ve been really fickle with my gaming this week. I’ve been ‘maining’ GT7 which gets most of my play time, I’m up to menu 37 now, but the menu races are getting so long that I’ve looked to other games as a diversion from the monotony of driving in circles.

I decided to follow my gut and just play the first game that popped into my head, whether I had planned to or not. Trying to just fly by the seat of my pants, so to speak.

I had a craving for a JRPG, for some reason. And perhaps it was due to the recent fun I had with co-op in Demon’s Souls with @MaulTsir (hopefully that platinum is right around the corner for you, my friend) — who by the way one-hit killed me in PvP with his Dragon Bone Smasher! 😅 I didn’t realize my NG+ mage was so fragile… — But anyways, I felt like maybe I wanted to dive into a new Soulsborne game, but since I also had an itch for a JRPG, in a spur-of-moment I threw my planned schedule to the wind and loaded up Code Vein.

Well, it was disappointing, to say the least. On paper it should have been a perfect fit for my mood. Bur after 3-4 hours of that game, I just wasn’t feeling it. It’s still as complex and difficult to understand as when I played the demo. There’s a good game in there somewhere, but I just wasn’t all that impressed. It lacks the soul (no pun intended) of a FromSoft game, and the JRPG story wasn’t all that compelling. The world feels bland and claustrophobic. The main issue however is the combat and RPG mechanics — they are just too much. The bloodcode and scaling mechanics are not intuitive to me at all. Even after searching online and watching beginner videos, nothing clicked and I can’t see myself really getting satisfied by it. I don’t think I’ll go back.

So next I thought about doing something less intimidating in the JRPG realm and decided it was time to finally play the Yuffie DLC FF7R Intergrade. Rather than buy it for $20, I spent the same $20 for an upgrade to PS+ Extra for the last 6 months of my subscription. In essence, the upgrading has already literally paid for itself.

I’m really enjoying the Intergrade DLC. It feels almost like a whole proper mini-sequel, kinda like Infamous First Light, or Uncharted Lost Legacy on a slightly smaller scale. There’s actually a lot more content than I had realized. It’s been almost a year since I did my FF7R playthrough and it’s a good time to jump back in, as it feels fresh yet familiar. Fighting as Yuffie is so incredibly satisfying with her ninja skills and the shuriken / boomerang weaponry is nearly as satisfying to throw around as Kratos’s axe. I’m about 3 hours in and I’m just now getting into the meat of the story. The Fort Condor mini-game is great! I’m hoping there is more of it coming up as I’ve beaten everyone in Sector 7.

On a side note, I’m really pleased with the Extra upgrade. As part of subbing, I went ahead and sold my physical copy of the vanilla PS4 FF7R since I have access to it through my PS+ library for now and so I’m actually a net positive cash-wise.

Now I’m eyeing all the PS+ Extra games that I need to try out. 😄

@JohnnyShoulder I think it’s doing pretty well, yeah. As much as it does still feel early access, I’m more convinced by their service model now than I was back when it was announced they were going F2P. You can easily have a great team without spending money at all, and the lack of a market means there aren’t all the wannabe stock brokers. Once Master League and the edit mode come out then I’ll probably be set!

Yikes, that's gonna be one heck of a six months for you! Just make sure you're not halfway through some huge eighty-hour epic when your subscription runs out, otherwise you'll be trapped forever!

@RogerRoger I’ve already had an inner monologue about just renewing at the $100/yr level instead of the $60/yr level. It does make sense to just keep in the subscription trap, based on the math.

The problem is, I feel like it won’t stop me from also buying games too, since many that I want to play next year (Hogwarts, Forspoken, FF16, etc.) are not going to be on the service. So will I really save money? 😅 It’s like that psychological game that vendor play with us by putting things on sale we’d never otherwise buy as we beam with pride about how we ‘saved money.’ 😛

One thing that you’ll be interested in though, since we’ve had the conversation a few times — one of the first games I downloaded (in addition to the aforementioned Intergrade) is Avengers. I plan to give it a spin in coming weeks/months. Another good use of The service, since I was reluctant to spend actual money on it specifically, since I have my skepticism about how it will gel with me.

@Th3solution I traded in a few games today which are on the service. I wasn't likely to go back to them anyway and gave me (even more) store credit.

In regards to still spending money on games, I have found that does decrease. And that will definitely continue going forward due to prices going up in everything. So games that I was thinking of buying Day 1 might have to wait until the prices drops. Which is OK, as I'm signed up to a service which has quite a few games I'm interested in.

@Th3solution I suppose that, until you give it a shot, you won't know the service's value to you specifically. If after a couple of months, you've played nothing exclusive to it and ended up purchasing a bunch of games separately, then you know you'll be safe to let it slide. Of course, it won't be as clear-cut as that and yes, I always end up going into shops for milk and bread and coming away with fish, spark plugs and a t-shirt that doesn't fit because "they were a bargain", like the tenner I saved somehow justifies the thirty bucks I wouldn't have spent to begin with. Ah, to be a consumer!

All joking aside, good shout on downloading Avengers, though! That is a good use of the service, particularly if you end up hating it after ten minutes or worse, are just ambivalent towards it. Thank you for thinking of me and yes, very much looking forward to reading your thoughts!

@JohnnyShoulder Same. I looked at games that I’ve already platinum’d and those which have newer swankier PS5 Director Cuts on PS+ and I figured I might as well trade them in for some store credit since I’m highly unlikely to play them in the next 2-3 years, and if so I can easily buy them back for cheaper or for an upgraded copy. I’ve kept a few of my native discs that I don’t have the plat for yet, even if they are on PS+, like Returnal and Demon’s Souls, just in case they get pulled from the service. I honestly doubt the first party stuff will leave the service though.

@RogerRoger I’m surprised at how excited I am to have the extended library, even though practically speaking, I’m unlikely to play more than 5-6 of the 400 games over the next 6 months. The real boon of it is having several small AA and indies (like Stray, Spirit of the North, Artful Escape, Deliver Us the Moon, and 11-11) to squeeze between bigger games though. But yes, definitely will drop some impressions when I try Avengers. Maybe I’ll fall in love with it and lose myself in the quagmire of live-service flotsam. 😄

I'm tempted to upgrade from 'Essential' - - > 'Extra', as Sony seem to be quite dedicated to expansion of the library - and there are already to many great titles to choose from.
'Extra' really does seem to pay for itself, assuming to play at last 2-3 of the top-tier titles available.

Imagine if you were completely new to Playstation, having never played any of the esteemed AAA games on the 'Extra' roster... the value for money would be incredible

@Th3solution Thanks again for helping me out my dude! It was awesome to finally put a voice to the name 🤣. I'm 2 spells away from the Plat so by this weekend I fully expect to have that boxed off.

I see you upgraded to the Extra tier, we spoke a little bit about it's value the other day so I hope you at least manage to get something from it in the next few months. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on how "useful" the service is for you and see how we both get on with the 4 - 5 months we have left before needing to re sub.

Shame about Code Vein, I haven't played it my self but have had my eye on it for some time(it's normally on offer for £6/7 so I've thought about pulling the plug a few times. Was it not what you where expecting?.

@Th3solution just read your post about Code Vein not really hitting the mark for you… and I totally get it. As you know, I love me some souls-likes… and am yet to consider any of the ones that I’ve played a poor game. But… I would say that Code Vein is probably my least favourite of the souls-likes that I’ve played (and I’ve played Immortal Unchained 😅).

For me it was the uninspired level design and ‘floaty’ combat. I mean, the sword that my character was wielding should’ve weighed in at around 300 pounds but in terms of how it felt to use for the gamer, may as well have been made out of polystyrene. As I persevered with the game, I did eventually grow to quite like it… but not in the way that I did for Nioh or The Surge etc.

Hopefully it won’t put you off trying other non-From souls-likes in future entirely as there are some really good ones out there…

@CJD87 That last paragraph is basically me. Well i got my first ever Playstation with my ps5 at the end of January this year. I did buy a lot of the older classics in sales and got some with the ps+ collection. With ps+ extra i got acces to a new big batch of games. From the extra tier alone i added over 40 games to my library, which include console exclusives like Miles Morales, Returnal, Demon Souls and Death Stranding. For it gives a great option to try those games out and see if i like those. Seeing premium also gives me access to a lot of ps3 games which i never played, for me it was a no brainer to upgrade to premium and i think after my ps plus ends (in january) i will go for another year of premium since it gives me acces to so many games i want to try at least.

@CJD87 I can give the comparison perspective from @Lavalera where I am a lifelong Sony PlayStation fan and have been going with the brand from PS1 and yet I’m still finding value [in my short time] with the PS+ Extra upgrade. I did have a few games in my library which are now redundantly included in the Extra catalog also, but surprisingly not very many. I guess I’m lucky that way so it worked out as a better compliment to my existing set of games.

Nevertheless, there are a boatload in the Extra collection that I already played, so there’s not much value for me in having a lot of those included like there is for the PlayStation rookies.

I was reluctant to pay the upgrade fee until I was literally ready to boot up a game from the catalog, but now that I have, it’s already feeling like a good value. It all depends on what you want to play next.

I’ve been keeping a wishlist of games on the PS Store that I’m keeping an eye on (I have around a dozen games on that list) and eventually about 4 of those games have been included on the Extra catalog so it really does make sense for me right now. Next year might be a different story, depending how things shake out.

@MaulTsir A delight to have been of service my friend, and I might just shoot up an SOS flare asking for co-op assistance some day as well. Returnal co-op sounds like it could be a blast when you get around to it.

And our convo regarding the Plus upgrade resonated so I followed your lead after talking about it. So far so good, as I’ve been preaching here and elsewhere. I further took your example and ended up going to the game shop over the weekend and sold back a bunch of games and ended up adding Elden Ring to my backlog 😅. Even after I said I was going to try DSIII first. I still might do them in that order, but when I went to shop around and use my store credit, there honestly wasn’t anything I wanted to buy except for Elden Ring and HFW and ER was the one which actually had a used copy for cheaper, surprisingly. I also looked at Life is Strange True Colors and RE Village as options to use the credit on, but decided ER was the impulse to follow that day. 😄

Regarding Code Vein (looping @colonelkilgore into the discussion here), I just couldn’t get into it. I’m a middling fan of the Japanese storytelling — not a guy who watches anime every weekend, but yet someone who’s played many a JRPG and can appreciate the different flavor of the East — but Code Vein just couldn’t grip me the way I wanted. Honestly it’s more about the combat system being convoluted rather than the story, but both fell flat for me. Usually if the story is engaging then I can look past a gameplay niggle, and vice versa. But when both major aspects underwhelm then I have trouble pushing through.

Like the colonel says, I can see the potential that after a lot of investment into the system that it probably eventually clicks, but you have to (as Yoda famously says) “unlearn what you have learned” about the Soulsborne approach in character building. The bloodcode system is similar but different just enough to be hard to grasp. If you do try it then let me know how you like it.

And colonel, I think I’ll still keep non-From Souls-likes in mind, so no worries. Steelrising looks pretty solid, and I really am intrigued by that Wukong game. And of course Jedi Fallen Order is a no-brainer for me to play the second one; really enjoyed the first.

@Th3solution yeah Steelrising looks more than decent. I watched a few reviews on YouTube following me reading the Push Square review and the exploration and ‘metroidvania’ aspects in particular looks really interesting. And obvs Black Myth Wukong just looks absolutely incredible.

@colonelkilgore Yeah, Steelrising is tantalizingly priced at just $50 and I think the review remarked that it’s not a huge game, maybe 12 hours, which is a plus in my book.

Still, as I remarked, I have a goodly amount of From games left so I might concentrate my efforts there. The Code Vein thing was a impulsive start due to being in a JRPG mood, but I hope to get to DS3 or ER as my next major Souls-like. I’m not ruling out returning to CV at some future point, by the way, since it may have just been dissonant with what I was expecting at the time (as you so aptly noted regarding timing one’s approach to RDR2 best correlating with a certain preparatory mindset).

@Th3solution yeah I reckon finishing off the From Soft library would probably be a good shout before you start moving on to the non-From variety. DS3 is great… but you might miss out on some of the cooler moments due to having not played the previous games (DS1 in particular). Even without that prior knowledge though it is awesome… arguably the best range of boss fights in a souls-like too.

@Lavalera Nice to know, and you must be swimming in quality titles as a 'new' Playstation user... happy gaming! If you've not played already, I would highly recommend Returnal which is on 'EXTRA' I believe (my personal 2021 GOTY, love it)

@Th3solution I might bite the bullet soon, will do another quick check of the list and if I see 2-3 titles which tantalise me then I'll shoot to upgrade my existing sub! Thanks for the feedback from an established PS user

@colonelkilgore I've been saying the same to @Th3solution for a couple of years now about playing Dark Souls 3 before the previous two games, but alas it seemed to fallen on deaf ears! 😂

@colonelkilgore 😄 as soon as I read your recommendation I thought about @JohnnyShoulder telling me that before. I always just assumed he was blowing hot air.😜

Honestly, I was reluctant to take my chances and DS3 sounds like it’s the most approachable of the series. But now that I have two From games under the belt I might get on with DS1 after all.