Topic: Games you've recently beat

@AgentCooper Congrats on the new baby, the human one and not the Xbox shaped one!

@AgentCooper so I know I’ve already congratulated you on your new bundle of joy over PSN but it bares being wished again, so mucho congrats buddy!

Also, glad that the Xbox is working out for you. It sounds like it’s UI and Gamepass is a great fit for your gaming at the moment… and well done on clearing four games during what must be a real busy (but happy) time 👍

@RogerRoger I actually never knew that. I recognized the voice since he's done a ton of stuff as himself, but I didn't really know who it was for sure. Definitely a nice touch there then.

Just beat God of War 2018 last night. Never played any of them before, and I owned a copy as a freebie since I brought a PS4 Pro. Finally got around to trying it a couple of weeks ago and have now played through the whole main story. Gameplay was pretty great and combat was quite challenging at times (initially started on Give Me a Challenge, but lowered to balanced shortly after Alfheim), though to be fair, I don't think I ever used half the skills I unlocked with XP, or even bother upgrading the runes for my weapons, or even applying enchantments to armour. Even towards the end, I kept forgetting I have Atreus. The characters took a little bit for me to warm to, but were enjoyable. Presentation looks great, the only thing that sucks was some really bad frame drops regardless of settings. Kind of want to play the older ones now to get some more backstory for Kratos. I will probably get Ragnarok in the near future, but going to focus on the collectathon side of the game now, fight the Valkyries and explore the realms I haven't gone to yet.

Just saw the rumors that it’ll be a PS+ offering this month! Christmas came early for me this year! What a stroke of luck!

@RogerRoger I am in something of a mood for it, mostly prompted by your and @Killowertz discussion lately. Furthermore there’s often a natural hype that spikes when a game is released on PS+, almost like a miniature second launch, so I might feel like jumping in on the hoopla right away. Out of curiosity, looked back and I completed the first game about 7 months ago, so it’s about time.

Unfortunately, I’ve really been lacking in available gaming time lately. My progress through existing game projects has dropped to a crawl. I had hoped the Thanksgiving holiday would provide me some much needed rest and relaxation to decompress through all my virtual escapes, but things didn’t turn out that way and I’m way behind my anticipated gaming schedule. Unfortunately, Christmas is looking like a similar situation. Although there’s some vacation time off from work forthcoming, my family and friends have nearly filled up my calendar already. It’s pretty frustrating.

Anyhoo, in all practicality I’ll not get to ME2/3 until 2023 sometime. But I’m delighted that I’ll have in on-deck now for when the mood strikes.

Yesterday I beat Miles Morales and it was an excellent short game. It makes me excited for Spider-Man 2!

Just finished Lego Lord of the Rings. It was okay, pretty much what I expected a Lego game to be I guess. Don’t think they’re for me… but probably was a much-needed change of pace after God of War: Ragnarok and Sekiro. I’ll finish off the platinum but unsure if I’ll play another one… maybe one day 🤔

@RogerRoger I’m glad to not be alone in my mixed feelings about the holiday season. It’s great fun sometimes, but just as often it’s a chore. Head’s above water presently, but my legs are getting tired from treading! Bah-Humbug!

I’ll definitely keep you updated if and when the inevitable playthrough continuation occurs for my Commander Shepard.

@KAIRU The story is around 3 to 4 hours max. But you can spend more time for collectables around the city.

Finished up Star Ocean: the Divine Force (PS5) today.

It's not GOTY material or anything, but it's nice JRPG comfort food.

Notable Pros:

• I felt the sort of Star Trek-ish world building gave it a unique feel in comparison to it's contemporaries.
• flying around with "D.U.M.A." made exploration & combat really fun.
• The board game mini-game, E'sowa, is actually really fun (the pieces are based on characters from past games too, so there's a bit of that kinda fan service for established series fans too), and it's worth it to play as the pieces you earn double as accessories you can equip to your party members, some of which have really useful effects.
• Very unrepentantly Japanese/embraces the sillier elements of the genre. It's too bad this'll likely go under the radar as it kinda runs counter to those who fear Japanese games are being westernized too much (for example, on the topic of "fan service", Elana & Marielle have the most active "jiggle physics" I've seen in a big-ish JRPG since certain Blades in XC2).

Notable Cons:

• It's apparently not optimized very well. TBH I played it on "fidelity mode" so it was probably capped at 30 FPS or some such in order to push the graphics and I didn't have many issues, however there were times it obviously fell below that (luckily they were usually cut scenes for some reason, so it really had no impact on gameplay). Apparently "performance mode" is worse, as while it targets 60 FPS, it has a harder time hitting it consistently than it does hitting 30 FPS in "fidelity mode". Of course last gen versions apparently perform even worse & the PC release isn't well optimized either.
• I can't help but feel it's lowish budget limited it's scope. It still feels like a complete game (took me between 30-40 hours to complete & I didn't do all side quests), but without getting into spoilers, it feels like there could have been more to later game areas compared to the environment(s) you're in for the first half of the game.
• Any time someone leaves the party all their equipment is removed and re-added to your inventory. This would normally a good thing (so you don't lose anything good), but the game has a bad habit (particularly in the early hours) of officially removing characters from your party for really small amounts of time (like for 5 or 10 minute periods), so you constantly have to refit them out. It becomes less prevalent as the game goes on though.

Two games I've just finished:
Xenoblade Chronicles 3:
Man, what a journey. After ~100 hours spread over several months it feels like saying goodbye to good friends. The characters are all uniquely endearing. While some might consider them tropy, I found them rather refreshing. The third game really takes what it learned from it's predecessors and delivers the ultimate experience. The story and characters deliver something truly meaningful. Gameplay is also great and never called for level grinding.
Side quests are partially interesting, especially the Hero Quests, though the majority is padded with very basic fetchquests. This has been my main gripe with the series, and while it has been vastly improved, it's still noticable.
All in all a RPG which scale, ambition and emotional resonance is hard to match.

Signalis:
I've delayed my plathrough of Ragnarök to play this game. I've been watching the devolpment of this like an eagle ever since the first trailer was released, and while I knew I was going to get a hommage to old school survival horror, I did not expect a game that would impress me emotionally and intellectually. This immediately reminded me of playing Silent Hill 2 back when it released.
I don't want to spoil the experience, some might find it a bit to esoterik perhaps, since much is up for interpretation. It's amazing what this team of two devs have put together.

I beat The Callisto Protocol on Maximum Security to ensure many, many deaths in my play-through (Definitely not from lack of skill).

I thought it was a pretty solid experience with some minor gripes probably stemming from the difficulty I chose. The game throws you into the thick of it right off the bat and keeps adding to it pretty consistently with new enemy types, weapon schematics and locations. Melee is simple but visceral, shooting felt kinda weak and the GRP glove seemed a little inconsistent with picking up/throwing enemies. I had a couple of bugs mainly in a couple of cutscenes where there was no lip-sync/completely out of sync, missing subtitles and some enemy encounters didn't activate which required a couple of restarts. Also it might be intentional but after a couple of checkpoint restarts some items stopped spawning after maybe the 3rd restart.

Overall I expected an homage to Dead Space and I had fun with it.

God of War (2018)

I meant to streamline the story before playing the sequel at some point but ended up doing everything, Muspelheim and Nifelheim included.

It still looks great, is awesome fun, and the story is brilliant. It wasn’t quite as long as I seem to remember but there’s plenty to do for sure. The combat is still the best bit and the Leviathan Axe was a great addition.

I swear the realm tear fight in Nifelheim was harder than anything else in the game though The final fight is like GoW of old with how epic it is but was pretty easy really.

Looking forward to the sequel even more now!

Finally got around to re-playing Castlevania: Rondo of Blood via the Castlevania Requiem collection on PS4 and collected all of the associated trophies. I really, really like the very early 90s soundtrack, lo-fi "animated" cutscenes with questionable english voice acting, and peak 2D pixel art presentation, thanks to it shipping on a CD-ROM based system. Although, I'll confess, I only play Richter until I unlock Maria, and then just play the rest of the game as her because of how agile she is. I also prefer her goofy, childish behavior in cutscenes to Richter's generic masculine hero dialogue.

Looking at the trophy list, the SOTN side of the equation isn't going to be nearly as breezy. Ugh.

So it only took around 9 hours but every hour was a joy… just finished the story for Captain America: Super Soldier and although I’d heard it was a bit of a hidden gem, I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did. Great little game that!

@AgentCooper Yeah, I just look at it from a ‘dollars and cents’ (pounds and pence…?) point of view. When I saw it would cost me $20 for the upgrade from PS+ Essential to Extra for 5 months, which is the same cost of one game I would buy, then I could see it doesn’t take much to pay for itself. So I don’t feel pressure to play 50 games on the service to get my money’s worth, I know as long as I find and play 2-3 solid games I enjoy then I break even and can justify the sub. Of course, you don’t own the games and can’t replay them forever (or sell them), but I honestly very rarely replay games.

As for the Souls games, I’m not sure if I’ll play all of them, but I think after Dark Souls Remastered I’ll play Dark Souls 3 and then Elden Ring. I’m not sure about Dark Souls 2 and Sekiro, but we’ll see. Speaking of replay, I do want to replay Bloodborne one day. It’s fantastic and still the best of the 3 From titles I’ve played so far. If they release a PS5 remaster then I’ll be tempted. But for now, I’ve got plenty of From games to keep me busy for a couple years. And with the rest of the industry gradually catching up with FromSoft by copying their formula, there look to be a lot of Souls-likes coming out that seem pretty decent. In fact, I’m jealous that I think GamePass will get WuKong and Lies of P on day 1 if I’m not mistaken, which both look great and seem Souls-y. I’ll also probably be the day 1 for Jedi Survivor which should be a Souls-like too.

Sort of completed Dragon Quest XI! There seems to be a hell of a lot of postgame content to the point that I’ve not really completed it if I’m being honest but it does very much feel like the end of the main story. There probably aren’t enough superlatives to describe how good the game is but it’s easily one of the best JRPGs of all time. I’d be tempted to say it’s the best JRPG on PS4, beating out Persona 5.

@nessisonett Yeah as Rog says, I'm usually way past having my fill of the game by the time I've finished the story. Mostly cos I take so long and I've seen everything that I need to. God of War 2018 is about the only exception as I wanted to keep playing even after I had got the platinum.

@RogerRoger @JohnnyShoulder Never mind, the game just pulled yet another twist and now I feel like I’ve got another third of the game to go. It’s not my fault, it said The End!