Topic: What PS5 Games Are You Currently Playing?

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Helpful thoughts and advice and I guess I’ll just have to see how I feel when the time comes. There’s Ghost of Yotei on the horizon and it’s possible that I might look at that to satiate any samurai appetite I might have. I even still have Rise of the Ronin in the back of my mind, and I’m surprised that it hasn’t been put on a steep discount yet. So many choices. 😄

On a whim, I re-downloaded and booted up Returnal. I’m embarrassed to say that it was done purely to complete the “Discover” PS Stars campaign that closes soon as I needed the 50 free PS Stars points to get over the top to be able to go from $5 to $10 PSN credit. I figured it’s worth $5 to just download and launch the game. I’ve already played and completed the game back shortly after its launch.

Well, what started as “I’ll just launch the game and get credit” turned into “Hmm… oh let’s see what this Tower of Sisyphus free expansion content is” and then into “dang, this game feels so great to play” and then a couple hours later I realized I had been sucked back into its world. 😅

I can’t afford to get distracted from my other games right now but I think I’ll leave Returnal on my console and dip into it from time to time. Such a good game.

@Th3solution No shame in that, I entered a PS Tournament in UFC 5 to get the last points in PS Stars for a fiver the other week.

Went up a few levels in ELDEN RING ,this morning, level 17 of 60 Vigor now, just have to get End to 60, Str to 80 and Dex to 80 as well, in addition to acquiring and upgrading the appropriate weaponry for my Sekiro build, as well as getting hold of the appropriate materia to aesthetically authenticate my build to 100% .

Just a couple of thoughts, though, I dunno about the DLC yet, obviously, but, man a Sekiro 'katana' build in ER seems very op, even early doors I'm absolutely wrecking the grunt style enemies. It seems very easy, but great fun. Just have to obtain those much-coveted Mimic Tear Ashes to mitigate the extra dps of those legendary ER & ER DLC bosses.

Maybe it's just 'cuz I love op builds, but I would personally say that ELDEN RING with a Sekiro build is better fun than playing Sekiro itself.

@Thrillho I will go back to Two Point Hospital after I'm done with Hades or the weather hots up again.

Yeah I can see there is a bit more to do in Hades in the hub than other games I've played on the genre.

The voice acting is ace too and I thought it was Ben Starr who played the main character, but was mistaken. He does apparently play someone in the sequel though. 👀

I beaten the first boss once after several attempts, but have failed to get past her since. Trying out the fists for my weapons at the mo. I did initially disregard the bow and arrows, but they are actually pretty good.

@JohnnyShoulder Just saw you played Sekiro on your profile, and remembered us having some discussion about it when I was initially interested in the game. What was the difficulty of the Guardian Ape boss like for you, and the boss your chose for the finale' ? , and which one was it?

@JohnnyShoulder All the weapons are pretty cool with some fun variations. I loved the shield with the ability to go all Capt America with the throwing ability.

And the amount of story in that type of game is insane with some great VA work. It’s another reason the platinum is such a mission though as characters have their own side stories to complete to get the “full” ending but the RNG nature of the game means you’re not guaranteed to find them on a run.

As I said before, with how you unlock stuff in this game it feels much less punishing to fail a run as you get something from pretty much every run to improve your character, plus you (hopefully) get better with each run too.

I can’t wait for the sequel and hopefully don’t injure my thumb like with this game from hammering the dash button so much 😁

@Th3solution I keep thinking about giving Returnal another go to see if I can get the collectibles for the platinum now but am also in the position that are too many other games still waiting for a first play!

@Thrillho Yeah, that’s my issue too. I’ve got a large backlog and would like to spend my time on first experiences. I am relatively close to the Returnal platinum also, but it would require a lot of grinding. The add-on content for it is easy to jump into though and I was surprised how quickly the muscle memory started to come back. I spent almost 90 hours on the game the first time around, so it’s ingrained into my central nervous system.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN I loved the Guardian Ape fight, one of my favourites in my gaming life. Even when it was chucking it's poop at you. 😂

It was difficult, but not one of the hardest in the game for me. Those come later. 😉

I chose going through the full game, as I think that has some of the best content, especially boss fights. They are very difficult though. I did mean to go back to get the other ending, but never did.

@JohnnyShoulder Oh, I went for the shorter ending as I found Guardian Ape to be quite fatiguing, until I learned how to cheese the second phase, but even that required a fair amount of strategy and skill.

Edit: As you say, though, the longer route looked a lot more challenging, and I was quite happy to go for the "less" (open to interpretation, ofc) difficult route to completion.

I decided to go to the area with the trolls in The Lands Between, to accumulate more souls, early, and man, did it pay off, I was absolutely decimating those mofos! Went up about another 8 levels or so in Vig and Dex, plus upgraded my Uchigatana, as I've said before, man, build is op! .

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Pity you have no interest in Nightreign, you'd love the Executor.

@Kairuuu It does look good, but, yeah, prefer the base game and also the look of what I've seen of SOTE, really looking forward to it. But thank you for pointing that out to me, and if I ever do take an interest in Nightreign I'll give be sure to give that weapon a spin.

Around 11 hours into Cyberpunk 2077 but honestly feel like I haven't scratched the surface. It's pretty great and I see why it's so well received. Kinda like a first person GTA but set in world which for want of a better world is just so.. Cyberpunk.
It seems particularly well written, the missions and gameplay have a great variety on how you can go about them and characters and world are exceptionally well realised.
So yeah I'm enjoying what I've played so far even if I am mostly mainlining missions rather than attempting to explore every nook, cranny and corner.
I have just gotten access to Keanu's car which is preloaded with front machine guns... Very awesome!

Oh and I'm just randomly putting all my upgrade points into Cool because ... It says cool. Why wouldnt I want my V to be fully exceptionally cool?

@sorteddan Enjoy! I loved the game and have played it through three times now; a very rare occurrence these days.

The combat can feel so cool when you get into the higher levels of upgrades. I loved being able to whizz around levels blasting people with shotguns.

The main story is really well written though and it was interesting to see so many things I didn’t pick up on first time round. But some of the side missions are also excellent, and even the more repetitive missions from fixers have plenty of story to them and variety in them too, often with different ways of doing things.

The DLC is also highly recommended too!

Speaking of Cyberpunk 2077. I checked out the new patch on the PS5 Pro (not even a Pro specific patch) Over 100fps 🙌

It is smooth as f***!

It is up there with The Last of Us and KCD2 in terms of an amazing unlocked fps VRR implementation. That is the future. 60fps sucks, unlocked vrr is the way. (And that is from someone that would still choose 30fps graphics mode vs a standard 60fps performance mode if it were the only choice)

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Executor's one of the characters in Nightreign. His skill is that he has his own cursed blade that allows you to parry attacks ala Sekiro, although you do suffer a movement penalty whilst using it. It's very cool though.

@Kairuuu Oh, I see, I was looking at the Executor's Blade when I made my last post, that must be his weapon. Deflecting Hardtear for the DLC could be another way to go for me as well.

@Thrillho
Thanks! I'm unlikely to get through more than once as I'm on a bit of a deadline before my PS+ sub runs out and I can get Back To The Backlog (BTTB). like I mentioned I kind of randomly stumbled into a character build because I couldn't be bothered to look at all of the skill trees... But am enjoying picking off goons with slow motion headshots and setting people on fire while hiding behind a box.

Did a side mission for the Delamain taxi guys and enjoyed meeting the varied AI constructs I had to track down, again another example of the quality of the writing and world building in my opinion.

How long did your playthroughs take? Have seen a few different numbers online. I'm just looking to complete the main story beats with a few random side missions if I stumble on them at an opportune time and not gonna attempt 100% or a platinum or anything. I'm guessing somewhere in the region of 30 hours?