@RogerRoger One of the best PS2 games if you ask me. I love 3D hack & slash games, and it holds up surprisingly well for one of the earlier games of the genre.
I am someways into chapter 2 of my Life is Strange Steam Deck replay and not gonna lie, I am having a real hard time with it.
It manages to be somehow more gameplay intensive than True Colors but in a bad way, while also somehow managing to be really boring, too. Like it almost feels like the meme version of what everyone complained True Colors to be (but wasn't really).
I would agree True Colors probably moved too quickly, I think it took me less than 20 hours to clear that game twice and that was with taking the time to explore the town, do side stuff and conversations etc. Steam puts me at over 5 hours into Life is Strange already and I've not even finished the second chapter yet. Madness.
But what has LiS done with all this extra time? Not a lot, honestly. Like imagine all of the walking around clicking on stuff to start conversations you did in True Colors, but make each of those sequences three times as long and make sure that absolutely no one has anything interesting to say at all.
I will also say it is a fair criticism that the powers in True Colors are not integrated very well, and they are sorta in a rush to get everyone to just be on the same page as Alex about her powers they can move on. I also feel the use of the powers kinda feeds into the wider anti climax that game has, because it sorta sets a precedent for the story to be grander than it is, when really it is fairly mundane.
Here, they do a much better job with this in Life is Strange narratively, where the powers are a central part of the story, people react like a human being would when someone tells you they have literal superpowers, and no True Colors, that doesn't mean a shrug of the shoulders and the coming storm, and use of flashes forwards and backwards is a nice narrative wrap around for all the proceedings.
The problem is they make you use your powers a lot more outside of just key sequences and make it feel more like a game. This should be a positive, but they execute this in either the most frustrating of ways (instadeath puzzle things) or in ways that are mind bogglingly tedious (memory games and other rubbish) or in ways that somewhat cheapen the experience, as almost every choice can be selected and experienced, and then you can rewind and pick your favourite one. Sure you won't know what later consequences come of this, but I actually like having to live with a choice, if I want to experience things differently I will play it again, I think rewinds suck in these sorts of games.
I actually am not surprised now replaying this as to why True Colors basically removed this stuff entirely, if Alex needed to convince Ryan her power was real by telling him what action figure he got for his 4th Birthday, what type of cake it was, how many candles were on the cake and what shoes he had on, and you fail this until you remember all four things exactly, then I might not have ever finished that game. How powerful is that moment where you look at the clouds with Ryan and experience his joy? Without it giving you some instafail do over pop quiz rubbish.
And I guess maybe this is all intended to pace the experience, but I feel like this would feel glacially slow without these gameplay sections, with them it feels like we are going backwards.
It probably doesn't help that so far I really don't like these characters at all, either. And at least some of that is probably by design and intended to increase the authenticity of the characters or whatever, but being cringe doesn't become less cringe because you are intentionally cringe.
Further, given Life is Strange is a much older game, and I'm playing a on a handheld device, I can really crank up the settings in a way I couldn't with True Colors, so it isn't the massive technical stepdown like I expected. Where the age does catch up with Life is Strange though is in the facial animation, or almost complete lack of.
True Colors has some of the best facial animation in the business for my money, and they let the actors do a lot of storytelling with facial expressions and body language. Here, faces are almost entirely static, all the time, which means the voice actors have to really do all the heavy lifting with their performances. And the performances are fine, but I dunno, as someone is giving this big emotional declaration and their eyes are darting around inside of a weird static mannequin face, it sorta becomes more funny and absurd to me than emotionally arresting.
I do like the whole Donnie Darko vibe this has, though and am gonna see this through to the end regardless, so fingers crossed the later chapters are better.
My memory caught up just moments before the reveal and that seemed to knock the wind out of me even harder and was the first time this game really genuinely made me feel something, and I felt it strongly, too.
For as much as I dislike the moment to moment gameplay in LiS - I still find a lot of it really tedious and I kinda wish they'd just get on with it. Narratively, what they have done with Max's power is excellent and really makes me realise how under utilised Alex's power was really by comparison.
I know that the ending to Chapter 2 is maybe a bigger shock if you balls it up (like I did) but I dunno, there I was less shocked by the emotional punch and more just generally impressed this could be failed at all.
I'm sure the game isn't sent on a drastically different path due to this, and I'm sure there is like an exact sequence of responses you need to press to clear this, so it isn't really about a culmination of your decisions, but it did a really excellent job at smoke and mirrorsing me anyway, as Kate referenced past choices I made and seemed to genuinely be moving closer and further to the edge based on each response I provided.
It kinda put into perspective how many choices in True Colors don't really matter. Like they matter when it comes to the purest sense of roleplay where you want Alex to be a certain kind of person, but the key narrative beats are going to be basically identical every playthrough and most key decisions are binary, you pick one or two decisions and they lead to a fixed outcome that aren't influenced by anything other than that one choice. The fact I have this moment of failure on the roof, which potentially someone else isn't going to have, is more than really True Colors can say throughout the game, unless you want to count like failing the jukebox game or whatever.
@AgentCooper There’s a main story in Skyrim??? All joking aside, I’ve spent probably in the thousands of hours in that world across like 4 consoles and it just doesn’t get old. One of the best games ever imo.
@AgentCooper For all the flack the series gets, the older Assassin's Creed games are genuinely a great time. You have so many great experiences ahead of you!
Speaking of Assassin's Creed, I'm playing the first 2.5D Assassin's Creed Chronicles game on PS4 and I'm sadly not having a good time with it. While the China setting is cool, the game just feels so bland and uninteresting to play. I definitely prefer the 3D games more and I can't wait to play Assassin's Creed Mirage when it comes out.
I've played AC games on and off from the beginning, but never much cared for them. I know a lot of people hate it, but Odyssey was the game that got me to care about Assassin's Creed (even if the follow up, Valhalla, was an absolute snooze fest). Odyssey is one of my favourite games ever, and Kassandra really awoke something in me (😂).
@LtSarge I tried with Chronicles China. It’s slightly more suited to Vita but the load times ruin it there. It just isn’t a very interesting game to play even though the art style is lovely.
@nessisonett Agreed. I'll keep playing it though just because I want to see it through and who knows, maybe the other two games will be better.
@Pizzamorg Odyssey is also one of my favourite games ever. It had everything I could want in an open world AC game and the setting was absolutely lovely. Love the characters as well!
One thing the AC series rarely gets recognition for is the historical settings. There isn't any other franchise that allows you to visit so many different periods and locations in history. I absolutely love history so it's fantastic that we have a series like AC.
@LN78 I know what you mean about the controller, while I’ve been loving Metroid Prime Remastered with the Pro Controller, it just isn’t the same without the Cube controller. There are a lot of games like that which the specific button layout of that controller feels perfect, either that or my brain is just hard-wired from an early age to prefer the ABXY buttons in that odd shape.
Made a start on Life is Strange 2, there is quite a lot of tribalism in that fanbase, so it was hard to parse what was genuine criticism versus people simply making stances to support their chosen collective, but I know there are people out there who absolutely hate this, even more than Deck Nine's titles. And that says a lot, as a subsect of the fanbase REALLY hates those.
However, at least based on the first episode, I am very much in the camp that thinks this absolutely terrible. At its best it shows no meaningful evolution from the original game, at worse it feels like complete regression.
It has more varied environments than the original Life is Strange, but the artstyle is still ugly and this runs even worse on the Deck than the original or Before The Storm did. You had to run True Colors on fairly low settings to get a stable experience on deck, which was a shame, but I couldn't even achieve that with Life is Strange 2, no matter how low I ran it, in places it just absolutely chugged.
Don't Nod went for a more point and click adventure approach like Deck Nine use, at least for this opening chapter, but I dunno, it still doesn't help the pacing. After a really clumsily written and executed sequence sets the game in motion, you would expect a really focused experience based on the set up, but everything feels aimless, and endless. This was the first chapter in a LiS game that had me pleading for it to end, but it just kept going and going, I didn't know the depths of the original game's tedium could be matched, let alone surpassed like it is here.
It has arguably the worst voice acting out of all four of the games, and the writing has never been worse. I'm not of the opinion that thinks politics have no place in games, and one of the best parts of the core Life is Strange is the challenging topics it tackles (even if not always successful) that are often not trodden by this medium, but if you wanna get onto a political soapbox you have got to have something to say. LiS is a thoughtful meditation on life, this? This is soulless. It has absolutely nothing to say beyond the most empty platitudes, it is a BLM in a Twitter bio of a person who does no other activism or charity beyond that.
Who knows. I heard that its the third chapter of this that will make you a fan of this if it is going to make a fan of you at all, so I guess we'll see where I land. The first chapter at least left a really bad impression.
Started playing Sniper Elite V2 on Series X. For some reason, I've been craving a game where you play as a sniper. So I decided to fire up this one as it's been sitting in my backlog for years. And it's so much fun! I can't believe I haven't played this series until now. It's just so satisfying when you aim at an enemy and the camera follows the traversal of the bullet until it hits them.
My only gripe is that the missions are incredibly linear. The game keeps baiting me with different pathways that are dead ends. Then I recalled that the levels in the later entries are more open, so I'm definitely getting those games.
@LtSarge I actually think I prefer how linear V2 is. 5 is a fantastic sandbox Hitman-esque game but 3 and 4 don’t really reach the level of refinement yet to justify the switch away from linear levels. V2 really nails the feeling of being in occupied territory as well, with a really cool recreation of Berlin near the end of the war, as it’s crumbling. The later levels are insanely tense as well. I did play on the hardest difficulty though so it was basically a survival horror game!
Amazon ballsed up my Dead Island 2 preorder and I read about how the game has some second half difficulty spikes which are resolved with guns, so I ended up getting it on PC. I'm about 50% done based on the progression tracker, main questline is almost complete, but I've barely touched the side content yet.
Honestly, it might be lowkey my favourite game of the year so far. Like, I've definitely played better titles by conventional metrics this year, but this is just pure frictionless gaming, which as a guy in my 30s I've grown to just really appreciate.
I know I can just play this for hours on end and know I will have fun all the way through and experience basically no frustration at all. I compare that to something like the Resi 4 remake (cause zombies), which I would say is inarguably a better game by conventional metrics, but I've not been in the right headspace for that for weeks, because every chapter is a sweaty, exhausting, gauntlet. The challenge is well tuned, and thrilling if you are in the right space for it, but it just isn't what I want after a long day of work. DI2 just removes all barriers that may block your fun, and I just love it for that.
@nessisonett As someone new to the series, I think V2 is a good entry point just to get familiar with the gameplay without feeling overwhelmed by so many different choices that you'll find in the later games that are more open. So I'm glad that there's at least one game like this in the series for us newcomers.
Xbox One:
Forza Motorsport 6 (not enjoying it but powering through it)
Ride 2
Dante's Inferno (360 backwards compatibility)
Brutal Legend (360 backwards compatibility)
Devil May Cry 5
Switch:
Shining Resonance Refrain
Clive n Wrench
Disgaea 6
Bayonetta 3's final boss
Metroid Dread
Monster Hunter Rise
Only game not listed but finished being Gear Club Unlimited 2 (yes that's my whole Switch library so far)
Wii U:
Tank Tank Tank
Hyrule Warriors
whatever eshop stuff I haven't gotten around to that are Wii U Indie games or virtual console.
Wii:
Speed Racer
Red Steel 1 & 2
Maybe NFS Nitro if I haven't given up enough on it yet.
PSP:
NFS Underground Rivals got others but it's the one focusing on the most.
Vita:
Trophy hunting a few games I own but mostly focusing on seeing how Minecraft, Borderlands 2 and Rayman Origins work on my PSTV. Otherwise was focusing on a few trophies or casual playthroughs of my other Vita games.
Regularly though playing Disgaea 3
WRC 4
and 40 Winks (wanted to try out a PS1 classic I hadn't and it's pretty fun).
PS3:
Finished Unreal Tournament 3 which was a lot of fun even if just bot matches the campaign so on to
Blazing Angels (flight game)
MotorStorm and Apocalypse
The Darkness 2 (my disk stops we at load screens whether the side modes or the level after the prologue (the button presses don't work but did the first time after crawling on the floor to the streets but the loading screens just go on and on it doesn't work).
PS4:
Conception Plus
Disgaea 5
I have others but those are the ones focusing on mostly right now. Like Redout, Utawareurmono Mask of Deception. I have GT Sport chillin there. A few others.
Besides Onii chanbara Z2 Chaos recently.
Forums
Topic: What (Non-PS4) game are you playing??
Posts 1,341 to 1,360 of 1,660
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic