Topic: Push Square Game Club Spooktacular: Resident Evil 4

@LtSarge The only problem I found with the constant dialogue is that it’s not brilliantly thought out at times as I found that sometimes a cut scene would trigger mid conversation if you pushed on while talking.

So I eventually ended up stopping to listen to what was being said which felt kind of stupid but it seemed daft to miss out on conversations otherwise.

@Thrillho That's true but at the same time, I feel like there's so much dialogue during the missions that I can live with not hearing everything they have to say.

Speaking of which, I think it's very impressive that they recorded so much dialogue for the characters and for different situations. For example, I was going off exploring and started shooting something on the ground that I thought I could destroy. Then Drax said something along the lines of "Why are you shooting, Peter Quill, is there an enemy near you?" and then Peter replied "No, there's nothing here". I think it's cool that there's context-sensitive dialogue in the game as well. Absolute kudos to the developers for recording so much dialogue and keeping players constantly entertained throughout the missions.

I’ve got a few games in progress, but I did go ahead and start Guardians and I think I’m going to really like it. It’s a bit weird at first, and it wasn’t the best opening that I’ve ever played, but after a few minutes it starts to feel a little better to play and you get used to the constant chatter.

Part of my issue was that I spent too much time trying to get fancy with my settings at the beginning. I always get obsessive with the settings at the outset — making sure the audio, video, difficulty, controller configuration, etc is all set the way I want; and I am playing on PS5 with my 3D Pulse headset so I wanted to have the 3D audio enabled. When I activated the custom audio with full dynamic range for 3D it made the voices so loud and all the audio was really jarring and inconsistent. I kept trying different adjustments to no avail and I finally just had to switch to the default audio and I’ll just have to go with that. I’ve opted for Ray Tracing for the video, but not sure if I’ll stick with it.

As far as the game itself and the characters, I think it’s going to be really good. I played the Telltale GotG game, and I can already feel a significant difference between the characters, especially Peter and Gamora. Rocket, Groot, and Drax are fairly consistent across the different entries. Probably because they are relatively one-note in their personalities, whereas Quill and Gamora are the more nuanced and complex characters in the group.

@ThereThere As long as you aim to be onto Chapter 4 by the end of the week then you’ll be fine! If you’re anything like me then you’ll be saying ‘just one more chapter’ anyway 😂

This game is just absolutely breathtaking.

Just finished Guardians of the Galaxy. What a fantastic game! I liked the GotG movies a lot but this game made me like the GotG franchise even more. That's the advantage of experiencing long stories through media such as TV shows and games; you get to spend more time with the characters and they start growing on you. I tend to not care about most Marvel characters because I've watched their stories through the MCU movies. Having now played this game for roughly 20 hours and experienced the backstories of the Guardians, I care about them a lot. I was also surprised to see so many interesting characters in the game in general. Moreover, the humour was on point and the constant chattering between the characters always kept the missions fun and interesting.

I'm also glad that the gameplay managed to stay interesting until the end. It felt very simplistic at the start but then you start pulling off all these different moves and attacks towards the end of the game. At that point each battle would become an exhilarating cluster of chaos and it was super fun. The different elemental attacks and abilities helped spice things up and the enemy variety was decent enough. Not to mention the huddle up all-out attack where you get to listen to a classic 80s song while going berserk on enemies.

Speaking of which, the soundtrack for this game was stellar. If you loved GTA Vice City because of its 80s soundtrack, then you're going to love GotG's soundtrack for the same reason. Listening to songs like Take On Me, Final Countdown, Never Gonna Give You Up and so on during battles made fighting so much more satisfying. There's just something about listening to songs like these during gameplay that enhances the experience a lot. It's the same reason why I loved Metal Gear Solid V when you e.g. fly in on a helicopter to a mission while listening to Take On Me. It's just so awesome. However, I do have to say that doing a huddle up attack against the final boss while listening to "Don't Worry, Be Happy" kinda killed the mood.

With that said, this was one of the best licensed superhero games I've played. The story was concise and the character development was so good. Furthermore, the gameplay was fun and it remained interesting until the end. On top of this, the music helped elevate the experience a lot. So overall, I loved this game and I'm glad I got to experience it.

I’ve only made a little progress; probably a week behind everyone else, but currently in Ch 4.

Man, I’m starting to love this game. It feels very much like a Sony first party styled game. A smidge of Uncharted along with some Ratchet & Clank vibes with the platforming shooting and futuristic weaponry. The party mechanics feel nice too and add something to the combat encounters. The Huddle Up feature reminds me a bit of Persona, how you can team up in those combat scenarios.

This has quickly become my main game and nudged out my other games I’ve been playing. It feels like one of those games that I’m going to want to savor.

I've made my way to chapter 14 and am enjoying the story and music but if I'm being honest, there's something about the gameplay that doesn't quite hit for me. Combat feels pretty floaty and the huddle mechanics still feel weird.

@R1spam @ThereThere I just seem to recall the game having the familiar problem that by the end you just end up spamming the same moves over and over rather than being too tactical.

@ThereThere @Thrillho I don't feel like anything is pushing me to adopt new strategies and the enemy variety isn't great. The gunplay feels very floaty and your party actions look awesome but I fire them off without thought. I ended up sticking the game on easy to just make the combat pass quickly. I am enjoying the game again after taking a break and feel the rest of the game (visuals, soundtrack, writing, character interactions) are first rate. If embracer picks up the license for eidos (edit) post acquisition, I think the gameplay needs a fair bit of work in a sequel.

I'm hoping to make a start on this at the weekend! Just need to finish up Dead Space for the PX game club

@ThereThere Nice! You made quick time through it. I’m pecking away and hope to have a few hours this weekend.

Each time I play I appreciate it more. The only voice acting that I don’t care for is Gamora. She’s okay, but sounds a smidge too… I don’t know, Southern California? Just doesn’t quite hit the alien assassin vibe consistently enough. All the others, including the secondary characters, have been great though. Especially Peter Quill, who somehow is able to sound enough like Chris Pratt to not come across too disorienting, yet different from him to make the performance his own.

@JudgeDredd Not so far. The flashback version of Peter is a little weird, but child and adolescent versions of main characters is difficult to nail (see Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted 3, whichever Tomb Raider that was which had her as a kid, etc, etc). For some reason it works going forward and having a progressively older version of the character (TLOU2) but not the other way around.

But no, I think he’s less “bro-dude” than Pratt but more “overconfident salesman talking his way out of trouble”. But I’m still only in chapter 5.

@JudgeDredd @Th3solution I found the bit between Rocket and Peter in the first half of the game to be quite annoying. It felt so dragged out.

@LtSarge @JudgeDredd Yeah, I’m currently in the section where I think people start to get annoyed at Peter and Rocket. Mostly it’s Rocket being whiney, but if Peter says “Come On, Guys…” one more time I’m going to snap. I wish the writers gave him a little more variety in his phraseology.

I also ran into a few glitches and bugs today. The game locked up when I went into a huddle during battle and just hung there unresponsive, so I had to restart from the last checkpoint. Didn’t lose more than a couple minutes of progress, but still disappointing. Then I’ve had a few clipping and small visual blips. And now I have a bug where the text screen for a kiosk prompt in Nowhere pops up overlaying the text box when ever I pick up an Archive collectible. Really weird. I’m going to reboot to see if it fixes it. If I have to play the whole rest of the game not being able to read the Archive items when I pick them up, I’m going to pull my hair out.

Still love the game. It needed a little more time in the oven though. These glitches are starting to happen too commonly to be ignored.

@Th3solution That's one of the reasons why I'm glad I played it on a current-gen system. I was planning on playing it on either PS4 or Xbox One and I can't imagine how bad the experience must've been on those systems when I was still experiencing a few hiccups here and there on Series X. The two common issues I faced were clipping through the ground and the game dropping frames in the second half of the story. But other than that it was a smooth experience.

I managed to finish up last night! I don't have any familiarity with the source material and have only seen the MCU movies but I think I like the cast of the game more than the movies. The story is up there with the best of the MCU movies (which to be fair, isnt maybe that hard). Their interactions are well crafted and the writing is sharp. It's a good sign for the next mass effect that they have one of the lead writers from this team on the next ME game. I'm still not sold on the gameplay, which always felt floaty and lacking in either heft, strategy or pacing. There are some sections in the middle of the game that drag a little and even as someone who is a huge naughty dog and Rockstar fan, there are sections where cut scenes just seem to keep going!! Nonetheless, it's one of the better licenced games I've played. Performance wise, the game looked and ran well, I did have a game breaking bug at the final boss though, which wasn't great. What's everyone's thoughts on the huddle mechanic? I was always disappointed that the narrative blurb never related to anything I was doing and felt so generic. It always took away from the epic tune that would follow.

I'm sorry, I think I've made the difficulty decision to pass on this month despite having every intention to play GotG and wanting to share the experience with you all.

The reason is that my Game Pass sub runs out in 18 days and while I will likely renew it, I might just sorta live sub free for a few weeks, maybe months. But yeah, I want to play Marvel Avengers and maybe finish Halo Infinite (I haven't touched it since January) in that time which will be tough to fit in around work.

I own Guardians on disc so I may play it in my sub-free period! Among other games that aren't restricted to a sub!

@LtSarge I’m playing it on PS5 and have settled in with Ray Tracing mode, but I’m wondering if I should switch to Performance mode. I just love all the pretty reflections though.

@JudgeDredd So far for me the high praise is fitting, although I’d take points away for the little technical shortcomings.
I’m in Ch 9 now and I found the story segments so far have actually surpassed my expectations. I was quite touched at the reveals in the previous chapter, and some of the moments are legitimately quite touching. Not quite on level with the best emotional storytelling in games yet, but I was surprised how invested I’ve become in Nikki and in Drax’s back story. So far the jokes land 75% of the time, and the dialogue choices add a little spice to the parts between battles.
Here’s hoping it doesn’t fall apart at the end. 🤞🏼

@R1spam Glad to hear you enjoyed it and I agree about the surprisingly solid narrative. The huddle mechanic is definitely underdeveloped. It’s usually easy enough to figure out the correct speech to give to rally the team, but I haven’t felt it makes that much of a difference in the battle. I see what they are trying to do there, but I would have liked to see a larger power up come from a successful huddle. Like an all-out attack that Persona does which will typically devastate the battlefield.

Out of the bunch of games that I have played post Elden Ring, this was the one that I seem to sticking with. It is good fun so far but I'm not totally over blown by it yet. That is ok though as I shouldn't expect evey game to knock my socks off, sometimes being a fun enjoyable experience is all you need from a game.

Think the characters are quite well written and acted, and surprised to see no well known names amongst the cast. I wouldn’t say there is a massive difference to the way the characters are portrayed to the films, they feel pretty much the same to me.

Playing in quality mode and it seems to be fine to me so far, think I might resist the temptation to try the other modes, as that is usually when I notice it more.