Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

@LtSarge Nice haul; should keep you busy over the holidays!

@LtSarge Wow, you've picked up a great selection! What do you think you'll play first?

@Th3solution Game prices have been a bit crap this year, so it's nice that many have come down in time for the holidays. The British market has historically been very competitive, but prices have remained stubbornly high for much of the year. I'm pleased with my digital purchases: I got Skyrim for the PS5, and Ori and the Will of the Wisps on the Switch (which I've been waiting for a discount for ages), as well as another year of cheap PS Plus.

@Th3solution I agree, I don't remember previous years having so many new releases so heavily discounted. Which begs the question, is there a reason to buy new releases during Autumn anymore? Games like Tales of Arise and Lost Judgment only came out a few months ago and they're already 50 percent off. So you might as well just wait a few months for Black Friday and buy them then.

@RogerRoger @mookysam I don't think I'll be playing through most of them right away but I might check out Miles Morales since it's been a while since I played the first Spider-Man game on PS4. I'm actually rather excited to finally play it!

@Th3solution @RogerRoger @mookysam Did you guys buy any games during Black Friday week or maybe you're waiting for tomorrow?

@LtSarge Yeah, perhaps the whole pandemic situation has the pricing upside-down. I also wonder if the pendulum is swinging back slightly from the $70 price point. It’s got to be good to see large uptick in purchases when the prices get more reasonable. Maybe it will send a message to publishers.

I picked up Demon’s Souls and Guardians of the Galaxy through the current BF deals. I had also recently bought The Last of Us 2 and Nier Replicant a couple weeks ago on a separate sale, but for a similar price points as they are going currently. Those four over the last month should be plenty for me for a while. All physical discs, by the way. Whether I get any more before sales end this weekend, I don’t know. The only one might be Hades. It’s base price isn’t too high anyways, so I’ll probably wait, even though it’s a mere $20 right now.

@Th3solution Ah nice! Do share your thoughts on Guardians of the Galaxy when you've played it as it seems like a very good game that I've completely overlooked when it was released.

It's interesting you mention physical copies because I just remembered that I got a letter with the package from the store that I bought four of my games from where they thanked me for preserving the culture of physical video games. Don't know if that was because I've bought a lot from them previously or that I simply bought four games from them, which is quite a lot. But either way, it was a nice message and it kinda makes me sad that physical games will inevitably be a thing of the past within the next ten years. I'm sure there will still be some physical games to buy, but it seems like services like Game Pass and PS Now are encouraging people to buy less physical games and play more of them digitally.

@LtSarge you'll enjoy Miles Morales! And let me know how Tales of Arise is.

@Kidfried Will do! I'm still new to the Tales of series as I've only played through Tales of Vesperia and I've played a bit of Tales of Xillia on PS3 before taking a break from it. So it might be a while before I get to Arise, but it does seem like it's the best game so far mechanically.

Have you played any Tales of games before and if so, do you like the series?

@LtSarge You'll love Miles Morales, I'm sure. My favourite superhero game of all time.

I'm not really partaking in Black Friday this year, but thanks for asking. I only had a couple games in mind, but they haven't been discounted enough to make them worth seizing, so I can be patient (or just get 'em when I'm ready for 'em). I'm not even sure if I'm gonna do my usual thing of stacking up some PS Plus on the cheap, as I never redeem any of its free games, and it'd probably be more cost-effective if I just got a month whenever I wanted to paddle around in some online multiplayer.

The only thing I'd really lose is the cloud-based save file thingy, but my OCD makes me a little fanatical about double-checking that anyway, so I might as well just be backing up my progress on a USB stick instead. It's the same amount of buttons to press.

Sorry, that reads like a real downbeat, defeatist answer! I'm glad you made the most of the sale!

@LtSarge @Kidfried I’ll be starting Tales of Arise as soon as I get the platinum in Guardians. Never played a Tales game before but the demo seemed fun and looked good.

@LtSarge Hi there friend. I played quite a few Tales of games, including the lastest Tales of Arise wich I really enjoyed playing on my PS5. Some are short (40 hours), others are very long (80 hours).
It´s kinda of a niche series. They are not exactly super popular like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, but it has its fans. Some of my personal favourites are: Tales of Destiny 2 (PS1), Tales of Shymphonia (NGC), Tales of Eternia (PSP), Tales of the Abyss (N3DS), Tales of Graces f (PS3), Tales of Vesperia (XBOX360), Tales of Xillia (PS3) and Tales of Arise (PS5).
Like I said, quite a few. Some you can probably get them cheap, others not so sure.
And yes, Arise is preety good. The combat, the characters, the world setting, the story and the visuals of course.
Oh, and that´s quite a nice Black Friday collection you got there. I also got a few myself as well. Enjoy.
Cheers, stay safe and have a good one

@themcnoisy okay dude, Borderlands 2 is installed and the Ultra HD Texture Pack is downloading. I’ll make a start first thing Monday morning and hopefully I’ll have a decent feel for it by the time you wanna partner-up 🤝

@colonelkilgore nice one bro! Good luck and happy hunting.

Cheers, my dudes.
A good way to spend a Friday night
I had to show my “Covid Certificate” at the door - glad that’s a thing now.

@Voltan Awesome. Have a great time 🤘

@RogerRoger Just a quick reminder — the PS5 doesn’t support manual back up saving via USB drives. It’s a crazy (and suspicious) omission. You’d be fine for your PS4 games though if you still have your Pro hooked up.

@Th3solution To clarify: it does but only for PS4 games - which is even more crazy, I guess.

@RogerRoger That's very high praise coming from you! I think I'm even more excited now to play it.

No worries mate, I think it's totally fine to not partake. I'm sure most games you want will get discounted even more in the future. I decided to hold off on a couple of games I wanted to buy for that reason actually. So hopefully you'll be able to whittle away at your backlog in the meantime!

@Voltan Yeah I've heard a lot of people enjoyed the demo as well. It does seem like Arise is lots of people's first entry into this series, so that should say a lot about the game.

@RaZieLDaNtE Hello! Oh wow, it seems like you have a lot of experience with this series! Have you been playing it for a long time or did you recently get into it?

Thanks! What games did you get for Black Friday if I might ask?

You have a good one too!

@LtSarge Hey friend.
Yeah, I´ve been playing Tales of games since the PS1 era.
RPGs are one of my favourite gaming genres and I got the hook with FFIV (SNES) and Story of Thor (Mega Drive). And been playing a lot of them over the years.
The Tales of games were different at the time, since most rpgs were turn based, and Tales of was one of the few who was action based. Kinda like the Star Ocean series. They are also very anime type games, so not a lot of people play them for that. it is what it is.
As for the games I got on Black Friday
For Nintendo Switch: Luigi´s Mansion 3, Monster Hunter Stories 2 and Metroid Dread.
For Playstation 5: Guardians of the Galaxy and Deathloop.
I was able to purchase all of them at 35€ each. Quite a bargain. Was not able to resist 😜
Cheers, stay safe and all the best

@Th3solution Thank you for your heads-up about the PS5's bizarre USB allergy back there. I'll definitely have a rummage around when I next boot my console up, because I'm pretty sure I saw a "copy" button buried in the settings somewhere. It isn't where it used to be on PS4, that's for certain.

@LtSarge My backlog could do with a lot of whittling, so thanks, you're absolutely right!

@Iver Excellent link, thanks for sharing! Particularly since I've been in a bit of a Tomb Raider mood of late, and reckon it's gonna last me a while yet. That whole thing about Lara not necessarily being conceived as a traditional hero is fascinating to me, because I definitely think of her as an "accidental hero", if not a true anti-hero. She's always got her own agenda, her own obsession with whatever trinket is up for grabs, and it just so happens that grabbing it before [insert villain here] will also save the world. I've always loved that about her, and so I'm pleased to see that it was kinda the intention all along!

@RogerRoger You maybe be thinking of PS4 games saves on a PS5, which you can backup to a USB drive. Native PS5 games you are unable to copy the save files to a USB drive.

You can back up them up to USB drive, but you can't choose individual game saves I believe. You can only back all of the saves you have on your console.