Topic: What PS5 Games Are You Currently Playing?

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN That's interesting, the account of Miyzaiki not wanting to be boxed in and known as a 'Souls' company.

TBH, I'm actually fairly exhausted by the genre and have sort of 'had my fill' of Souls titles (FromSoft or imitation). I'd love to see FromSoft riff a little differently.... I was actually amazed by AC6 for example.

I'm all for From spreading their wings and trying something new on a large scale.... but the concept behind Nightreign is definitely not want I wanted to see! Hope to be proven wrong, still (and always) a loyal From fan

Infinity Nikki (trying to finish the story so I can delete the game, I can already feel the addictive mechanics setting in) Aliens Dark Descent (slow to start and rather unforgiving but it gets much better once you rank up your marines) 7 Days to Die (the original on PS4 was probably one of the lowest rated games on here but the PS5 version (paid upgrade) brings the game up to the current PC build and it's much better) I might try Forespoken next to see if it's as dull as people say, or Killer Frequency for something more indie.

@GirlVersusGame Have you tried Alien: Isolation? I found it too difficult to do the stealth parts but seemed like a great game and I might replay it some day.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Not yet, everything I heard about the AI being so brutal made me not want to put myself through it. I do love stealth though, if it was possible to do the whole game without being seen I'd try. If you get spotted in Descent they automatically launch a hunt which can then escalate into a whole swarm. There's even a stress meter, and an escalation mechanic which raises the amount of enemies you'll face as time passes. There's a death clock too (which can be disabled in custom settings) if you don't use your days correctly you can lose the whole playthrough.

@GirlVersusGame Apparently on the easiest difficulty setting the alien is quite passive and you can even avoid it for your whole playthrough, according to some people, but yeah, I definitely think it's not a game for everyone.

Finished both Infinity Nikki and Unknown 9: Awakening, so I moved onto Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo. Picked it up for under £3 in the latest sale on the PlayStation Store. Seems decent so far. If you like games like Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, then this seems like it's worth a shot at that price.

I just bought Final Fantasy VII Rebirth the other day. And after only 6 hours in, I'm just as overawed as I was with Remake.

Maybe the quality drops at some point, but I'm somewhat surprised there wasn't more buzz about this game throughout the year. Sure, there were people talking about this game, but I would expect it to be more in the conversation based on what I played so far.

Anyway, I'm enjoying my time a lot, constantly looking forward to exploring more of this world. I love the drama, the minigames, the beauty of the world, the characters (seem even more fleshed out than in Remake!). But most of it I have a lot of appreciation for how different this game is from Remake, despite having a mostly similar battle system. I was expecting more of an iterative sequel, but what the devs did is mind-blowing.

Anyway, thanks Square 🌞

Taking a break from the Witcher 3 so I started Alan Wake 2 while playing some Marvel Rivals. After a few games I really liked it. Iron Man so far is my main.

@Bentleyma Can you tell me how did you like Infinity Nikki? I'm tempting to try it out but I don't understand what type of game is it?

Is it something like Animal crossing?

Beat Chained Ogre, this afternoon, in Sekiro. Using Flame Vent and a YouTube strategy guide definitely made the fight feel easier. Definitely a 'Dark Souls'-style boss.

@Khwarezm89 I wouldn't really say it's like Animal Crossing. You can catch bugs and fish, but it's more of an open world RPG. There's a main story to follow, side quests, very basic combat and dungeon like areas. It is a quite relaxing game. The world is joyous and looks gorgeous. It's free, so definitely worth trying out.

Currently playing Gordian Quest. Stumbled upon it for $2 in the latest sale. It is quite fun. A mix of rogue lite deck building rpg. I think D&D fans and Slay the Spire fans would enjoy it. It's random encounters with skill based story checks as well. You have 3 in your party as you embark, but you can swap for others depending on what you like. Well worth the $2. Id pay a bit more for it, with as much fun as I'm having. I will see if it holds up throughout and comment again then.

@Bentleyma Nice. I don't know when I heard it's free so I didn't think it would be a story single player game and my mind automatically put the game in the Live Service, Gatcha, MMO whatever genre

I guess I'll give it a try then. Thank you!

@Khwarezm89 Don't let it being free-to-play put you off. I played through the main story without feeling the need to pay for anything.

@Herculean Curious, do you think someone would enjoy rebirth only playing a few hours of the first one? I did play final fantasy 7 original to completion when that came out years ago. Rebirth looks better then the city setting and might grab me more.

So I finally gave Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance a whirl the past few weeks @Ralizah and playing the canon of Vengeance.

... Gonna be honest I might consider dropping this.

I don't know if it's partially because I've been ill whilst playing it but I have some VERY mixed feelings on it.

It looks great and I love a lot of the new demons (And appreciate some of the older demons that have come back).

But otherwise I would say it's felt... Rather aimless. The traversal is wishy-washy to put it nicely and I am really not vibing with the soundtrack like a good 8 times outta 10.

I really hate the move pool being ridiculously limited and only just managing to have a 6 skill moveset (and that still feels too limiting). Not to mention quite a lot of demons base skill sets are... Rather godawful in my opinion.

I've got to the second map and I'm about to visit the fairy forest to check up on the missing students but... I dunno I don't see myself going much further.

Nocturne this is DEFINITELY not.

@HallowMoonshadow Sorry to hear you're not getting on with it. I actually really loved it, although considering my general lack of regard for Nocturne and your dissatisfaction with P5, I get the sense we're not the most compatible in terms of MegaTen.

Kozuka's compositions are definitely different than Meguro's work in older SMT games. I will say V's soundtrack, as much as I like it (and I really like it most of the time), isn't as consistently themed as his work on IV, which is still my favorite OST in the series.

My favorite thing about V is how fair the Hard mode feels. It's hard, but not, like, crazy, unplayable BS like in Nocturne.

I've been playing Spider-Man 2 for the last week or so and an maybe three quarters of the way through so I guess I've played enough to state that, for me, it's just a bit of a disappointment. Don't get me wrong it's a fine game, plays well and looks great so I've been getting all introspective and trying to work out why it hasn't really clicked for me.

I really enjoyed the first one and even Miles Morales, though that was more like a DLC for the first one in my opinion. Maybe it's that superhero fatigue and I'm just not that hyped for Marvel stuff anymore. Maybe my expectations going in were too high and I was expecting a 8'or 9 out of 10 and it feels more like a 6 or 7. Maybe it's not really attempted to do anything new so it's just more of the stuff I was doing years ago. Or maybe I've just changed my tastes in the intervening period between the last installments and this one.

The combat seems repetitive, I can't really be bothered with the random crimes that keep popping up as I'm swinging around the city anymore, the collectables just seem like padding busywork and even the more cinematic main quest parts are just extended QTEs.

I am going to persevere and finish it, hopefully over the next day or two so maybe the climax will turn it around but it's not a game I will look back on particularly fondly.
How did anybody else feel about it? Is it just me?

@sorteddan I feel like you about most of Sony's first-party games in general, specifically the sequels as they're just more of the same. I mean sure, you can glide in Spider-Man 2 and I prefer the sequel to the first game. But it's largely more of the same game. I didn't even like the first Spider-Man to begin with lol. Although I did enjoy Miles Morales a lot. It could be because it was a shorter experience and Miles' abilities are more varied and fun than Peter's.

@LtSarge @sorteddan I really quite enjoyed SM2, and felt it was one of the best games I played this year. The final quarter of the game does mix things up somewhat so you might enjoy it a little more, although it doesn’t suddenly become a tactical shooter or a complete gameplay subversion or anything. I do think the Marvel fatigue doesn’t help with the feeling many people have of it feeling too samey with the last games. The short run times of the games makes it feel less monotonous to me than say, the final 20 hours of Persona 5 or Red Dead Redemption II, or even TLoU2, which are games I felt just dragged a bit toward the end.

There’s also just an expectation that I think we have now because of the long development times and the increased innovation and variety we have in games. So “safe” sequels are becoming harder to swallow when one has to wait 5 years between entries. The Uncharteds, the Assassin’s Creeds, the BioShocks (at least the first two), the God of Wars (originals), the Mass Effects, etc, etc were also really iterative with their sequels but often the second game was felt to be the best. I think back then the first of a series was a testing ground and then a couple years later the studio released the real polished version with all the tweaks on the first to make it better and it made for a real big splash for people wanting more. In the current environment, it’s so competitive for our game time that expectations are that each release is polished from the get-go and a sequel should innovate and give a grand new experience. I’m not saying it’s wrong to have these expectations, I just think that’s where we all are.

I have yet to play Forbidden West or GoW Ragnarok, but I do expect they will be just polished versions of the first game. Even Astro Bot, if you call that a sequel 😅. Also Ghost of Yotei. I think TLoU2 innovated the most among the first party sequels and the experimentation with gameplay seemed to be a hit but the subversion of expectations with the narrative made many fans upset. So I think there’s always a risk either way, whether the studio plays it safe or tries a new direction.

That's looking like a possibility... Although the myriad of reasons why I dislike P5 is completely different to my current annoyances with SMTVV! Aside from not liking either's soundtrack that is

Kozuka's compositions are definitely different than Meguro's work in older SMT games. I will say V's soundtrack, as much as I like it (and I really like it most of the time), isn't as consistently themed as his work on IV, which is still my favorite OST in the series.

... I would kill for a Battle B2 right now (That's admitedly the only SMTIV song I really know... But it's an absolute banger of a boss theme). The level up music is pretty good... That's really kinda it in SMTVV though. I've honestly muted the music and played something else instead.

My favorite thing about V is how fair the Hard mode feels. It's hard, but not, like, crazy, unplayable BS like in Nocturne.

... Funny you mention that as the bosses in this have actually made me restart a number of times compared to Nocturne where it was a rare occurrence.

Even infamous Matador only took like 2 attempts and yet my first fight against Naamah took like 4 and Nuwa was no slouch either with her gargantuan health pool.

Though Nocturne's hard mode is completely ridiculous

... I will give it one last chance when I'm not as sick as a dog (Which may've made me more irritated). But it's on very thin ice at the moment!