Topic: Push Square Game Club Spooktacular: Resident Evil 4

@Keith_Zissou nice!! I remember being taken aback by the difficulty spike at that boss! Progress should be a bit more even now.

@ralphdibny did you play and like Alan Wake? I really enjoyed it, playing it on 360 only a couple of years ago. I kinda fell of both dlc but have a sneaky feeling it might be something you need to know about for Alan wake 2. Let me know if you enjoy the AWE dlc as it's something I keep meaning to come back to.

@R1spam I really loved Alan Wake back in the day, and I still appreciate many aspects of it. Looking back though, it hasn't aged that well. Gaming has just become so much better at what Alan Wake tried to do: delivering a cinematic experience.

(Also, I really disliked the gameplay in that game for about 50% of the ride.)

I did really like the concepts of the original Alan Wake's DLC. At least it was daring, even if it wasn't really fun. I don't have any strong feelings about the spin-off.

The AWe DLC for Control then... I didn't like it, it's probably the part of Control I liked the least. In my opinion the Alan Wake character brought the DLC down. But even with that said, the game's shared universe makes total sense, so lore wise it's still a cool concept. So fans should probably play that before Alan Wake 2 regardless.

@Kidfried I'm a sucker for that cinematic quality in a game but its the Stephen King vibes which are rare in games that grabbed me. I agree about the gameplay, hell it probably didn't even stand out for that when it released! I started the AWE dlc but the foundation stuff just grabbed me more. How do you feel about the alan wake sequel being a survival horror game? A remedy take on survival horror could be really interesting!

@R1spam It makes me more excited about the game, knowing it'll be a different genre. I think the game's core concepts will work better in a survival style game, like worrying about flashlights battery, and also the monsters jumping out of nowhere.
And it also sounds like Remedy are aware that the 360 Alan Wake game has aged, and is in need of some shakeups. It makes me more confident that Remedy knows what they're doing.

@Keith_Zissou shield toggle eh? I'll have to check that out. I literally never used the shield until I realised near the end of the game there were trophies for killing enemies with it 😅. I just ran around and jumped a lot to avoid fire!!

@R1spam I played Alan Wake as part of the Pure Xbox GC back in like May I think? I'd echo @Kidfried 's comments and say that the gameplay was a bit off for me. But overall, I enjoyed it and loved the Stephen King aspect of it. It's most similar to the book The Dark Half, but I seem to remember there being lots of other Stephen King tropes peppered through it, though I struggle to remember what. I'll have to look over what I wrote on the PX forums back then to remind myself!

I actually didn't mind the light/shoot combo, the thing I really hated was how slow Alan Wake was and the stamina for the "run" (more like a slightly faster jog) running out so quick. I know it fits the world of the game but it really discouraged exploration which I did quite a bit of and unfortunately just made the pacing of the story too glacial in nature. What was more annoying was the lack of stuff in corners. You kind of explore a bit and find stuff, then you drag Alan's slow body across half the map and there's nothing there 😅.

I actually did a lot less exploring in Quantum Break because of that, I kind of "learned" that maybe Remedy makes the sort of game you should just play and only go off the beaten path if you fancy it instead of scouring every level methodically. Funnily enough, the main character in QB runs a bit faster than Alan Wake. The main character in Control is way faster than that too so exploring is bearable again! With that statistical curve, I'd say Remedy will probably be making a new Sonic the Hedgehog game next!! 😅

I did play both AW DLCs but I am really struggling to remember them now. I think I remember them being good though. American Nightmare was pretty good too, I played that much more recently so I can remember it a lot better.

Great soundtrack in all of Remedy's games too!

I've made a start on the AWE DLC, it's good so far. There's one particular returning character who I really can't remember from Alan Wake at all so it's a bit lost on me 😂. Maybe I'll read a recap of the story on Wikipedia or something before I fire it up again on Monday!

@ralphdibny @Kidfried @R1spam I played Alan Wake remastered a few months back and I’m with you on the dated comments. I enjoyed the story and even some of the setting but just found it a drag in the end. The environments and action didn’t change throughout the entire game and juggling the torch and gun just got too frustrating for me.

I could see where the idea was going and I like that they carried that into the AWE DLC in Control but there was just something about it in AW that made it laborious. Perhaps it was that most of the weapons felt they had no impact or that trying to stagger multiple enemies coming at you from different directions at the same time was near impossible in some cases. In the end completing the game felt enough for me.

I’m with you on the running thing ralphdibny. I basically made peace with that by reminding myself that the guy’s a middle aged writer called Alan. Also imagining him as an ex-smoker with a poor diet helps 😆

@render definitely makes sense within the context of the game world for sure 😅. Not sure if he's the most enjoyable protagonist to play as in a traditional action adventure-ish horror game though. Even if it was a fun story and a fun character in terms of actual characterisation!

@Keith_Zissou nice one mate! I definitely thought first ending was a tad abrupt but when the credits went all messed up I realised what was going on. Maybe they added that fake out because they knew the second ending would feel very abrupt without it? 😅

But yeah defo agree that it felt like the ambition for the scope of the title was way more than they were able to actually put in the game. It was good still though!

Enjoyed reading everyone’s experiences with Control which is one of my very favorite games from the last couple years and a joy to play on the PS5 where it runs so smoothly and looks so good. I’m really looking forward to the sequel.

What @Th3solution said.

Control was my 2019 Game of the Year and a rare game I've played multiple times, with a third playthrough happening at some point whenever I actually play the Ultimate Edition on PS5. It didn't click with me right away and I gave up on it, but I restarted it to give it a second chance and obviously the rest is history. I'm glad it was a pretty successful choice for the Game Club.

Maybe someday I'll actually participate.

@KilloWertz Ah, man you gotta play the Ultimate Edition. Whether playing at 60fps or with the awesome ray tracing, either way it’s phenomenal to behold.

@Th3solution Yeah it's been good to see that others enjoy this game as much as I do and that some that were unsure about it initially went on to like it too.

It's Remedy's best game to date by far and I'm looking forward to seeing where they take it with a sequel or any other games in the Remedy universe.

@Th3solution Don't worry, I will. I planned to already, but it kept getting pushed back. A side effect of playing on multiple consoles, but I plan on playing on my PS5 for the majority of the year, so I'll get to it at some point after Horizon Forbidden West.

I did play it for maybe a hour several months ago just to see what it looked and ran like. I was extremely pleased with what I saw, which was in the ray tracing mode. I don't mind the 30 FPS with Control since I've already beaten twice at that frame rate. I like 60 FPS in most games, and did play it for a few minutes like that, but it felt off to me since I had played it twice already in 30, and I thought the lighting looked too good to sacrifice it for the extra frame rate.

I finished the Alan Wake DLC earlier. It was nice even though I can't remember Hartman at all from Alan Wake. I remember there was a doctor but I don't remember him looking like that 😅. Looking at some pics on one of the boards reminded me of more stuff in Alan Wake. I had kind of forgotten all the stuff in town and only remembered the lake and the mental hospital. Nice tease for the new Alan Wake game too.

Then I decided to mop up trophies. I wish I didn't. The cat one was so tedious. I literally have no idea how you could even know it was a thing without using a guide. I used a guide to mop up some other Foundation trophies. The AWE trophies look slightly less tedious but I'm still not looking forward to it.

I polished off the last of the DLC trophies in the AWE expansion this morning. So glad it's all wrapped up now! The vending machine one was pretty lame as I'd never even seen a possessed vending machine in my normal playthrough. Getting them to spawn was a pain in the neck.

@Keith_Zissou Vending Spree was the one that glitched on me. I shot one in the abandoned offices and it managed to get away and then I never saw another one again even though each time I played I'd shoot at every vending machine I saw. I looked around and others reported the same problem and suggested resetting the save to the endgame to fix it. I tried that and within 10 minutes of fast travelling to each of the vending machine locations I'd got the trophy. Might be worth a try but only do it once you've finished everything else as you might loose some DLC progress that way.

Edit: found the page I got the tip from... https://www.reddit.com/r/controlgame/comments/liw8th/vending_...

@Keith_Zissou nice one! I didn't want to nuke my save for the trophy so I kept looking. After you've cycled through and checked the vending machines, getting killed by the Hiss and respawning can help trigger them. Sometimes it works and sometimes I got nothing. I literally did think my game was glitched too when none of them became possessed during my first half hour. Eventually one did pop though doing the "getting killed by Hiss" method.

It was the same for me though, so close to 100%ing the trophies made me persevere with it!

Yesterday I played through Mirrors Edge in its entirety for the Pure Xbox game club. It's not a great game but a short sweet pallet cleanser after the 1.5 month saga that was Control.

I've still got Halo Infinite on the go. And I am really hoping to start Yakuza 4 sooner rather than later. How about yourself? What's next in your pipeline?

@ralphdibny @Keith_Zissou If you’ve got PS+ then you could always turn off auto sync on the cloud save just for Control. Then you can manually sync it before you reset your save to end game, get the trophy and then just manually download your save from the cloud followed by turning auto sync back on.

@Keith_Zissou brilliant stuff. I did the same schum game for the airborne rangers but I only had to beat about 6 of them to reach the target. That was my final trophy too and I ended up leaving that game of schum incomplete. I started reading/listening to the collectibles. Initially all of them but as boredom set in, select ones only and then as sleep set in (bearing in mind this was the middle of the day), just the Alan Wake ones but as my patience run out, I just gave up 😂.

It turned out well that we both sort of left these last bits to the back end of this month's(?) Game club. Definitely helped to motivate me get it over the line having somebody else in a similar spot to me!

I need to play Wolf Among Us at some point. It comes highly recommended and considering I've played some amazing Telltale games (such as the Walking Dead), I can only assume that Wolf Among Us lives up to that standard.

I'm thinking of having a dip into the Mass Effect world now that the remakes/masters are now on Game Pass. I've never played them before but I hear they are very good, especially for a Trekkie like myself. Absolutely gota do Yakuza first though, they got added last year so I suspect they will be delisted in the coming months and of course they are quite long so yeah, gotta get on it really!