Topic: What PS5 Games Are You Currently Playing?

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@Kraven I mean, it's hard to judge. But I think it is easy for someone who likes that type of game and is prepared to learn how it works in spite of any perception of it being worse gameplay or whatever.

Overall, it was kind of better in a lot of weird ways, too, and I find the quest complexity and the need for a cerebral approach was far more prominent than in the first. And yet, you could still fail your way forward through the story, just with more negative consequences for not paying attention or not finding certain clues, rushing, or dallying... (a common theme I see is that people that loved KCD1 still kind of prefer it in a lot of ways, and people that found it a bit too much or simply like newer cleaner things, well they naturally prefer KCD2)

But all the charm and the quirky stuff is there that you will already know from KCD2, which is why it made such an impression on me in the first place. It is a bit janky, of course - although i've found combat is much improved with higher frame rates, and I find masterstrikes and dictating a fight the way I want to be farrrr easier than when I first played it - but all RPG's are janky in some ways as so much effort is put into choices, paths, decisions, reactivity and being able to role play however you want, as well as having that cinematic story that moves along and has quests interlinking throughout. It is actually amazing to think just how much they fit into the game as a kick-starter funded indie.

So yes, it may be a bit harder than KCD2, but it is the kind of game that rewards you for your time learning it (playing KCD2 will natually put you ahead of someone starting with no knowledge anyway, but Henry still has to learn everything, too, as he really is a dumba$$ 😁). KCD2 is similar in that way, but it didn't surprise me with its mechanics or have much of a learning curve, as I already had that understanding that Henry had to learn to git good as well, so I knew not to be put off if it felt hard as I know it gets easy quickly when you know how to train the fool up properly. But their may be a slightly bigger curve going from 2 to 1 rather than 1 to 2. But not by much if you pay attention to what the game tells you and don't assume it is just a game like all those other games out there.

I think going back you would see how certain ideas formed and were realised on a much tighter budget back then and see how an indie dev simply made a game that they wanted to make as a passion project. A game that is really unique and particular, and yet still familiar in lots of other ways.

Some potential useful info:
You can't easily cheese 'exit saves' as blatantly as you can in KCD2, so you have to commit to your decisions unless you stock up on schnapps, and it is best to always sleep or chug schnapps to save before travelling any great distance or undertaking a non quest detour (kind of logical anyway, if we understand its sim elements) you still get saves on quest acceptance, quest resolution etc, and it doesn't take much effort to have a power nap to create a hard save every so often just to be sure. But you'll already be familiar with that kind of thing from KCD2, it is just known by some as more punishing and it values you making decisions on whether to take risks if yiu haven'tsaved for a while (I, myself, learned what not to do as I was searching for a Bandit Camp on my first playthough. It was dark, I was lost, I had no schnapps in my pockets and I wandered into a group of said bandits who instantly ended me. I lost some regular progress and that was all it took to teach me not to do that again, and to always be prepared. Simple as that. If we don't learn from our mistakes, it is on us, the player, not the game.

The only ways i'd say it is less accessible is:
you can't just batch bake savior schnapps for quite a while as Henry is a dumb peasant who can't even read. But it is easy enough to get groschen and permanently rent inns for saves and storage. If you do happen to be exploring, some of the 'interesting sites also have save beds too. And you can exit save if you really, really need a save if you fear losong progress. Just you just can't spam reloading that exit save from in the game itself as you have to load it from the main menu, which would require a reboot of the game to get to the main menu and load it from there. It is still a nice rolling back up if you dont want to waste schnapps and haven't saved for a time.

Circle is sprint/gallop (so i'd recommend using back paddles with circle assigned to a right paddle, or just taking a while to get used to it. Although the fact the left stick orients you on your axis during sprints, rather than strafing sideways, means you dont really need to have your right thumb on r3 while sprinting. But I have found back paddles to be a real casual way to play it just for comfort and ease. They did make it easier in KCD2 and in-line with most other games with the click to sprint, but KCD1 isn't egregious once you get a feel for it. I think they probably realised too late it was a bit awkward compared to other FP games when using a controller, though.

And KCD requires a little more brain power if you are doing involved quests and side quests, which is a big positive, in my opinion. So things Henry doesn't know may not have a big radar marker pointing to them like other games. It let's you know this early though with tasks like 'find a shovel' and you having to use Henry's eyes and ears rather than have a marker or arrow. I feel KCD2 maybe had a few too many markers during quests in comparison, despite it still being fairly similar in its design.

Combat... people say KCD is harder and worse, but i'm used to it, and it is miles better than a skyrim or anything like that, so 🤷‍♂️ you have 5 directions for the r2 swings and L1 parries, and an r1 stab command as well. It rewards the more considered attacks and more calm approach, same as KCD2. Running away can be very hard as you will get turned around and pulled back, so if you think a fight will be tough you have to make that decision to run early, not while already surrounded, otherwise...💀 less of a problem if you manage your saves well, though, so you can always take on those fights if you know you wont lost progress.

But apart from that, it is pretty much the same so i'm pretty sure you will love it 🤷‍♂️

It may be a time sink in terms of playtime. But, the same as KCD2, it actually respects your time and intelligence and it rewards you over and over again with charm and with things to discover for yourself. It also let's you make your own mistakes as part of the experience rather than locking everything to pass/fail or right/wrong.*

You will have to relearn the combat and the slight differences, and discover everything along with Henry, but the game is literally designed to learn at the same time as the character, so everything you do will be making it easier for you both. You should be familiar with this concept, anyway.

Honestly, it's crazy when you hear how people save before a fight and then try to beat it 100 times and then get annoyed and moan about the game, because they are failing because Henry isn't capable at that point, and no amount of the gamer retrying is going suddenly have Henry know master strikes or have any further experience, and, if they do then beat the fight by luck, then Henry has not really learned much and will continue to be ill-prepared unless they actually have him practise his skills and face multiple different challenges. This is the number one reason why people give up, because in other games you can get away with scumming past fights with multiple efforts and get away with it, but in KCD games you just leave Henry underpowered if you keep scumming past things and make the game harder and harder for yourself as you go along, rather than making it much, much easier by having Henry improve.

Apologies, I should really get AI to work that into a more manageable, much shorter comment 😅

• Tldr:
  I think you will be fine after settling into the groove and getting used to any differences, or past any of the early challenges. It is an RPG at the end of the day, and it is still a great RPG today, and one hell of a game that is specifically designed to be the way it is *

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@Ravix i'm so very tempted to say 'you did good' and pat you on the head 😬 but, that is definitely not my role here, and hopefully you already got your reward. It does look cool, though. I've never been into Lego, but I can imagine it suits your desire to build and create things 😄 was it fun, or more just meditative, a task to be done?

• It's hard to explain how I even have Legos, I haven't been buying them. There's a Lady who when she visits brings Legos, clothes, cosmetics, candy etc. She has no children, it's not ethical for Adults to live this kind of life and have children. It's too involved and I give one hundred and ten percent to one Person. It's similar for her and other Women. She's supposed to be seen as tough/emotionless with a palm of steel etc, there's always a kind of scrutiny/perfection. They do it to themselves.

I'm her down-time/after-care. I think Women have a natural something inside to nurture, that's her way of making up for missing that part. I'll use what you said about a head pat, if she did that to a cat it would be seen as 'she's too soft' but with me 'that's fine, quite normal'. Both might go meow if you get my drift. What you called intense before, it goes both ways, pressure to fit the role/mold and it's 24/7 for both parties. They don't game, nor have hobbies, but they are human and need a distraction from that mindset.

She's always late for dinner, busy out shopping for gifts. Last evening I wasn't the only one who noticed she'd brought the same set twice and I hadn't even made an effort to build it. Which is like if someone does something nice for you and then you leave it aside, that's rude. I've built some cats and flowers, also from her. Technically she shouldn't be spoiling me, it's breaking protocol but she's stubborn and it's interesting to watch both go head to head. Either way I except the gifts, candy etc. You would too, most would. You have those rabbit ears so you are off to a good start, never say never.

I don't unbox my games though, if I buy something physical it stays sealed and I play a digital double. That mentality made it across to that set, I wanted to leave it sealed. It was meditative building it (after about the first hour) but opening the box was brutal. I stared at the box for maybe twenty minutes trying to figure out how to carefully open it without damaging the seal too much then he walked in with a big knife, opened it himself and gave me that ultimatum. I probably would have stared at it all night without that ignition.

I saw this today it was almost a thing and Lego never ran with it. 'They have taken their attention to detail to an impressive level, transforming a simple LEGO construction into a veritable object of admiration. The DualShock 2 is accurately reproduced, as are the memory cards. The disc drive is functional and removable, with a movable lens. The inside of the console reveals the electronic circuits, right down to the lithium battery that powers the internal clock'. That's real dedication.

And yeah, as a summary for what KCD is you can kind of read what I said to Kraven, but it is a bit of a mess, so... freshly for you...

• Thanks, I did read that but thought it must have been too late in the morning, I wasn't following. I think what happened with Kingdom Come is that we talked about the history and about the Hussites for hours one night and that reinforced my thinking of it being one big historical simulator. It says a lot about the game when it does have all of those elements (which I've only seen you mention) and still manages to retain that sense of high quality, at least when it comes to my curiosity. It feels like sandbox open-world games aren't that much of a focus anymore. Or they are being advertised differently and they are bypassing my radar completely. Crimson Desert almost did, then I saw the recent trailer, that game world and now I'll most likely play it at launch.

That shot above sold me on Crimson Desert. Every other trailer/article made me think it was an online game. It seemed to have too many features to be a single player game and I probably confused it with Black Desert Online but now I want to play it. Maybe it's similar to Kingdom Come. I hope Fable does it right, I've played it on Xbox and really enjoyed the world and character design.

I don't think I've played many Mafiya games, they are kind of stereotype heavy and I try to avoid stereotypes about certain subjects, lifestyles etc. I remember the last one had the old school racing and I couldn't do it. I was watching a guy on Youtube doing it over and over again and making it look easy, it wasn't. I deleted the game. The new one has x-ray vision, yikes and why? I didn't like when Hitman Absolution did that, almost everything that game did was wrong for the series and almost tanked the entire franchise. That's why World of Assassination went episodic, investors were losing confidence in the brand. I would be too, Absolution felt so generic and was definitely a product of it's time.

I did like The Godfather, that mechanic of throwing people through windows, I did that over and over again. Someone walked into the room asking what I was doing, they kept hearing constant smashing over and over again. It must have sounded that realistic and they expected to see glass I suppose. I never tried the last Saints Row either, it looked really bad. The first two were great, the soundtracks too. I should care a lot more about the Elder Scrolls 6, they just haven't given a lot to go on and Starfield was and still is rough. I want to trust Bethesda, that's hard when I've tried Starfield on and off over a year and it's not very polished or intuitive. It will land on PS5 eventually and people will (or won't) see for themselves. They should have cancelled the game and put all of their resources in Elder Scrolls, maybe by now we'd see some footage or hints of gameplay. Maybe in another decade.

About time you played Kingdom Come: Deliverance, isn't it? Thought so.

• Maybe I bought a copy already and it's sitting idly by somewhere, but Crimson Desert definitely has my eye, if everything it's advertising is really going to be there and functioning. I stopped pre-ordering games after Civilization 7, that was a bad day and there was a strong lesson there. Crimson Desert seems to have a lot going for it, I've seen games like that on PC and some of them landed flat on their backs. Except Enshrouded and Valheim. My next sandbox will probably be Spiderman, I did download it and I need to try a big name Sony title. He's also a super-hero I know nothing about other than how he gets those web shooting powers. The rest is a mystery.

My ideal Marvel game would be a city building/management game where you play as Wilson Fisk, it will never happen. I watched DareDevil for him, he's such a gentleman and he could probably snap Spiderman in half which is a bonus. I'm not going over to the other side per-say, team Fisk all the way but I probably will try the game today. That's also why I like Batman, he's doing the right thing (technically) but he's not fully on that one side either, he's no cop and knows how to get his hands dirty. I don't know many other superheroes, maybe Blade and Spawn and they too do their own thing which I respect. I don't know what Superman does? I haven't watched any of that material or Iron Man or the others. I was told Superman was 'too Western', he's from Space? so that logic doesn't (no pun intended) fly, maybe eventually I'll watch a movie. The Punisher obviously, I really like him but only have that PS2 game (which is really good) and The Crow would be fantastic if they turned it into a good game. I did play the InFamous games and Prototype. If Spiderman goes well I'll look a little closer at Uncharted, Last of Us etc. Control too and possibly Alan Wake. If not I'll burn through every walking simulator available in a couple of weeks and then be back to looking for new genres.

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@Ravix How are you finding Spider-Man?

What if they had a crossover and Batman had to face Fisk? What then, for you? 🤯 Or is that mean to suggest such a thing happening and you having to choose?

• They did have a cross-over. I went on a perfectly legal deep dive of Spiderman graphic novels last night and saw there was a cross-over for both but I was busy reading Spiderman-Noir at the time. Amazon probably dropped off the hard copy earlier today which means at the rate I get through my deliveries I'll probably see it next Summer. It was a really good read. Then Furious posted a trailer for a TV series on the same re-imaging. It looks like The Joker and Carnage (red toothy guy) are the main antagonists in that Batman / Spiderman crossover.

If Batman had to fight Wilson Fisk? There's a book called Knight-Fall where Bane breaks Batman's back off his knee. I would expect Fisk does that to Spiderman and Batman decides to call it a day and perhaps go into business with Fisk. No one wants that kind of massive spinal devastation and he's strong enough to do it so perhaps they form a conglomerate between Fisk and Wayne Enterprises. That would be my favored outcome and economically viable for both parties involved. Partnership, they could work together to maintain better Control of certain illicit markets which means less public collateral, less work for other superheroes and a better overall public image for the city. Rather than allowing so many random factions to waste time and resources fighting between themselves, with proper Control and direction the sky would be the limit.

Come to think of it he could partner with Harvey Dent too and Harvey would be seen as the Mayor who cleaned up the city, it would lower certain prices too meaning less petty crime. Fisk understood that certain business models help to keep the boat from rocking. Spiderman ruined that by doing his thing, I know he's a Superhero etc but he made the problem worse not better. I see Fisk as a force for order out of determinism not just order out of chaos. Batman is different, he's neither good nor bad, he's a force of entropy, he goes outside of the lines when it suits his own moral choice or fundamental beliefs. There's room there for compromise, Spiderman is too busy swinging through life to understand that every city needs a Wilson Fisk and that will never change.

My Spiderman is already doing things differently. I calculated that if he took the contents of that trunk, cut it (not counting distribution costs) he would come away with just shy of 4.8mil USD and that's before adding up those bank notes. He's in the right city for it at the right time with the right prices. That's why I said I wanted to play a Fisk city builder/management game.

The game itself is a lot better than expected. I'm some how almost 60% finished with the main story, which is odd considering I spent most of my time checking architecture and my old view to see if it was all that accurate, it really is. The brickwork, the cladding, it's eerily similar to what I would have seen every day. I've never seen that happen in a game before, it was like being back there. New Yorker's must love the game. The attention to detail in recreating the Upper East Side and Midtown especially is really impressive. I've found inconsistencies with Central Park (to be expected) Broadway and a couple of buildings but as a whole they've done a great job. The story is good too, I didn't know he was involved with helping the poor/homeless or that he knew his way around a laboratory. I thought he was a high school kid. I expected to see Toby McGuire's face, who is this man, was my reaction.

There are a lot of Ubi-elements too like bases (construction sites) and collectibles, also random events, I like that sort of side-content. It's not overly intrusive, some of them add to who he is as a person, I didn't expect environmentalism but here we are cleaning up the bay and taking air filtration samples.

I'm probably swinging too fast through the city for much of agoraphobia or similar to kick in, which is interesting because I was glued to walls, bushes and avoiding open spaces in Everybody's Gone to The Rapture and that had no NPCs but this game has city-wide blocks and boroughs full of them but it's not too bad. It might be having lived there too but I've lived in the English countryside too so it's anyone's guess. Perhaps because it's third person, they don't do studies on this kind of thing but obviously I'm curious. I'm impressed by their level of accessibility too, longer windows to dodge, better notifications of when to dodge, they were very considerate and not enough games do that. I'm sure it would hit harder in the feels department if I were a fan of the franchise, I thought it was his aunt that died and his uncle that survived. That's how out of touch with Spiderman I was, I watched that first movie because Sam Raimi directed it. None of the others and maybe three episodes of the cartoon.

Have you played it? or any of them? You'd probably like this one. There's a lot of content to busy yourself with and you can beat people up to your hearts content. It's just very strict in-terms of (you must be good) though that said you can swing sewer lids, parking meters and garbage cans at the public and no one seems to care.

And I haven't played the Old Country yet, X-ray vision, do you mean they have like a "hear the enemies and see them glowing through walls' mechanic? Or something? I don't remember seeing that.

• That sort of mechanic where you can see through walls to track movements etc. It's not at all realistic and ruins any sense of genuine immersion especially when the game is set in 1900s. I haven't met many Sicilians who have instinct vision, though at times I did wonder if she could. It's a gag that needs to be removed from current games especially if they are going to incorporate stealth. It works in a game like ARK: Survival Ascended or Batman, they can explain it away through technology and detective vision. Games don't have to be that linear, a little less hand holding goes a long way. There's no sense of achievement in outsmarting anything when you see through walls.

So, the other night I was doing a side quest that led me to a church, and, while there, my slightly unhinged Henry - who goes a little crazy when he's left alone in a room or the wild with no witnesses -saw an opportunity to feed his blood lust.

• That sounds like my experience with Red Dead 2, at least concerning the lack of witnesses. I justify actions like that as it's not crime per-say unless you are caught and even then there is the burden of proof. In your case Henry might just have had a moment, a passing bout of violence that he is probably working on in his own time. It would be hard to judge him for his actions. The same way it would be hard to judge my Spiderman from becoming an equal opportunist. He keeps saying he can't pay his rent, I see a way to fix that just like Henry most likely had his reasons. Especially if loot were involved.So yeah, that is my take on the sandbox this time, seeing how far I can push the game 😅
• That's one of the more fun approaches with a sandbox and it doesn't seem that many games offer those kinds of options anymore, there's a focus on playing it safe and not drawing outside of the lines or just getting it completely wrong and trying to use a white crayon to colour a zebra. I'm not cynical, I just haven't seen that much genuine freedom in a long time. Outside of remasters, everything is too serious. I don't play games to experience something that serious, unless it's a simulator which adventure games aren't. If anything your game is a kind of medieval simulator of sorts and it still offers more than a standard sandbox experience, it sounds like the developers understand how to balance story with fun, which is rare now or at least seems to be.

I hope Crimson Desert is another one of those exceptions. I feel a little of that Dragon's Dogma 2 energy, that 'this will be amazing I'll try to reschedule this and that so I can play it day one', I did and then finished the game that evening. Either I'm getting faster or games are getting smaller, it feels like playing Homefront for the first time and then after two hours thinking 'oh brilliant I've finished the prologue' and sitting dumbfounded as the end credits role. I see less of that when I move backwards and focus on PS4 games, there was more scrutiny to release a sizable package. I'm not seeing that as much with PS5, but I'd like to be proven wrong so I can shift focus to those better games.