Topic: What PS5 Games Are You Currently Playing?

@oliverp Loved it. I thought Skyrim was the better game, but this remaster has changed my mind. Definitely worth picking up if you can ignore the performance issues.

Had my first few rounds of PGA 2K23 and a return to The First Descendant after playing a bit last year. Still think it plays well but came up against a nasty RNG drop towards the end of session. The game states a 20% drop rate but this was nowhere near. @CaptD managed to get the drop after about 10 attempts… and then I was on the verge of hanging it up for the night at around attempt 15 but thank the gaming RNG deities it finally dropped 😅. Nice relaxing day of gaming after the last month tbh 😁

@graymamba
Yes the RNGesus gods were certainly against us, I shall have to consider cancelling my monthly RNG charity donation. I pay for divine interventions, not to have to grind.
It gave me flashbacks to Pure Bladestone which despite the quoted 0.5% drop rate resulted in me running the same sequence way more than 200 times.

I think we have a couple more quests like that so we shall see what is in store.
Plus the worst thing was that it was the longest and toughest mission, so perhaps next time we do the last mission first....that will confuse the algorithm.

@CaptD sounds like a cunning plan 😁

@graymamba can I ask why PGA 2k23?

I accept that yearly sports releases very rarely change, so the year doesn't really matter. But why not EA PGA?

I've tried a bunch of 2K golf demos, trials and full games, and always instantly deleted them after the intro. I just thought they looked awful every time and the gameplay didn't seem like a reason to stick around.

Peak for me is EA PGA with all the arcade options turned off to play more like a sim

@Ravix I do actually have the EA Road to the Masters sitting on the shelf as it goes… and I will be interested to see how that differs when I get around to it, as I haven’t played an EA golf game since Tiger Woods 2003 (which I loved back in the day).

I went with 2K23 though, as I was concerned that the player numbers could be lowering to non-existent what with the release of 2K25 and I wanted to ensure I could get the multiplayer trophy popped before it would become unachievable. It’s really good too tbh… I like how they’ve implemented the fade/draw and spin functions and the graphics have definitely improved over 2K21 too.

@graymamba ah, yes. The trophies 😅 I'm surprised I didn't think of that, considering. Funnily enough, EA PGA is one of my only ever platinums, and I wasn't even expecting that, I just happened to play it a decent amount at one point. So it may be classed as quite an easy one 🤷‍♂️ Not sure if the trophy includes online play like 2K, but I played a little online, so maybe it did, but I can't see it being extensive, either way.

This:

is also a rare occurrence, which I like. But it does take tweaking the settings to remove most all of the arcade features to make it more realistic and hit that sweet spot of recreating PGA Tour golf. It's still a fairly easy game, once you know what you're doing, but you can purposely hinder it to feel more like the challenge of real golf and it seems to reward you with a sweet dopamine hit for planning shots in this way, more than just flag hunting with a big marker showing the ball will basically go in any time you want it to with the easy arcade settings.

It does allow for stupid meta builds, but one can ignore that and avoid min/maxing, but I'm pretty sure online people just have max power and max chipping/putting and ignore the actual game of golf between 😅

Man, I do really like the game. I'm going to have to get back on it more this summer haha.

Nothing more rewarding than landing a shot on the green, having only 4 points in putting, speed reading the greens and hitting it in before the commentary team has finished talking about your last shot and realising you are quite good at doing it most of the time 😅 in fact, just hitting a lag putt close from distance is pretty satisfying

I think I've talked myself into loading it up later, now 🙈 and hopefully encouraged you to do so, also.

@Ravix nice, glad that I’ve kindled a little bit of interest for you to return to it. Congrats on getting that platinum too… we’ll make a trophy hunter if you yet 😉

@graymamba I mean, I like golf, it's golf season, European golf is absolutely dominating in a Ryder Cup year, McIlroy slayed the Green Jacketed Demon that tormented him, it seems like as good a time as any 😁

EA must be thinking about another Rory PGA game at this point too, feels like it would be printing money. I bet they'd like to see the indoor golf element in a game as well, as it would suit some ridiculous gamey elements that they could obviously sate the live service hunger of those players and CEOs that crave it 😅

Hmm, I wonder when Tiger's 2k deal runs out 🤔 Rory and Tiger's EA PGA Tour: Road to the Indoor Golf League, The Players, The Masters, The PGA Championship, The US Open, The Open, The Grand Slam, The FedEx Cup and The Ryder Cup, featuring Shane Lowry's Drinking and Karaoke Mini Games.

@Ravix I didn’t even know anything about indoor golf, I’ll have to have a look into that.

@graymamba an acquired taste at the moment, i'd say. I do think it will grow and be good for young kids to get into watching and playing the sport. I imagine they will plan for a female league, and maybe mixed golf, bringing more focus to female players too. They will probably try to end up franchising the "experience" so people can take part locally at venues too. At the moment it is kind of just a way to hear Shane Lowry swear more as he hits balls at a giant tv.

There was a documentary on Sky, which is where I first saw what it was all about. Think it was called: 'Boston Common: The Making of a Sports Team' something like that.

@Ravix can’t believe that it completely passed me by tbh. Just had a little look into it and I’m fairly intrigued.

Who’s all going to be playing Doom The Dark Ages day 1? I’m hoping to be finished with Clair Obscur by then, but I think I will be since I have two days where I’m completely free of any responsibilities, haha.

Played a bit of Astro's Playroom on my boyfriend's PS5 Pro. It's so cute!

Nintendo would've charged $60 for a tech demo this extensive.

The full Astrobot game is EVEN cuter @Ralizah! Hands down the best game I've played so far this year. It's just pure joy.

And yeah really does shame Ninty's Welcome Tour or whatever it's called coming out huh now that you've actually given Astro's Playroom a try?

@HallowMoonshadow Yeah, it's basically a 3D Mario game in everything but name. Team Asobi really seems to have absorbed a lot of what makes those games fun. Which kind of automatically makes them Sony's best developer now.

Welcome Tour doesn't really need something else to look bad in comparison, but yeah, it is an impressive bit of pre-loaded software. He actually has Astro Bot as well, and I was tempted to play that, but having never used a PS5 before then, I thought it would make more sense to try our Astro's Playroom first.

Hopefully gonna make my way through both games this year. Might also try out Demon's Souls at some point, since it doesn't look like it'll ever be ported to other platforms.

The way the controller changes how it feels when you pull the trigger is pretty cool tbh. One of the neater bits of console tech I've seen to date.

@Ralizah Such a joy to hear first impressions on PS5. The first time with Astro’s Playroom is such a delight. Hopefully y’all also have a nice big 4K OLED TV to soak up the great visuals. The only downside to playing Astro’s Playroom first is that every other game from here on out will disappoint when it comes to DualSense usage. (I haven’t played Astro Bot yet so I’m sure it maintains the excellent use of the DualSense though).

Actually Demon’s Souls has pretty good haptic feedback on the controller, but does not use the adaptive triggers at all. The visuals are fabulous though. It’s widely considered the best looking Souls game.

The adaptive trigger usage on a lot of first party games (and some third party) is a nice added touch. Returnal has a really cool dual function of the triggers where you can hold them to a halfway point where it will give a little resistance and it performs an alternate fire function, as opposed to doing a full press. In GT7 the triggers give you resistance based on how hard your hitting the throttle or the brakes. Many games have a different feel to the trigger depending on which weapon you’re using, like a shotgun feels heavier than a pistol due to the change in trigger resistance, etc, etc. Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart has decent DualSense, as do the Spider-Man games. Still… none of them quite hold a candle to Astro.

There’s really so many awesome PS5 discoveries for you. I know you’ve been playing a lot of them on PC, but it’s nice that you have the option now.

@Th3solution If memory serves me right the only time the adaptive triggers are used in Demon’s Souls is when drawing a bow.

Got through the first phase of the final boss for the 'Shura' ending in Sekiro this morning, making progress, feels good.

@JohnnyShoulder Ah, that’s good to know, should I ever do a replay. I went full magic build for my first and only DeS playthrough and I don’t think I ever used a bow.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN The Journey is almost complete! That final boss is the stuff of legends, from what I hear.