Topic: What (Non-PS4) game are you playing??

@KratosMD Great to see you’re enjoying MW2, I have fond fond memories of playing multiplayer on Rust and Terminal with my brothers. The campaign’s really quite good for an FPS. I always found it interesting how CoD campaigns are written off but DOOM games are eagerly anticipated.

@KratosMD The spec ops bring back mixed memories for me as I lived in a house with a group of guys at uni when this game came out and we spent ages doing all of those for 3*

Any of them with juggernauts were a nightmare. The one with one person in the helicopter was easily the one we played most though.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Weirdly enough, Big the Cat is so hated, he's become loved again in recent years; he's the character equivalent of a bad movie that's so bad, it's good.

Hmm, from the games you've got available, I'd recommend... whichever one features Amy the least.

@Ralizah She looks cool, I'll give you that (although some of the earlier 3D games, there's a disturbing amount of upskirting in her cutscenes). She's also been pretty cool outside of the games; her character in Sonic Boom, for example, leant more towards snark and other, softer stereotypes.

@RogerRoger Considering how many Sonic characters run around without pants, you'd think the allure of the "low angle" shot would lose its appeal .

Urgh.

@Ralizah I'm trying to think of something clever and witty to say but, alas, have found every subsequent conversational avenue to be hideously inappropriate on multiple levels.

Well done, you win! Let's move rapidly on!

Tagging @Gremio108 here, because I'm currently playing PaRappa the Rapper 2 and have some general thoughts. I can't decide whether I'm done with it for now, or whether I'll keep playing, or leave it on my HDD for random half-hour bursts in the future, so I won't write up anything more detailed than this.

Something tells me we're never gonna see a better version than this PS2 Classic re-release on PS4, simply because the whole game doesn't hang together as well as its predecessor. The songs are still great (my favourite being the first, about cooking the perfect burger, because it was on an Official PS2 Magazine demo disc I had as a kid) but its plot takes on a far more surrealist, over-the-top tone than the original's more domestic, everyday teen romance angle. PaRappa and his friends must do battle with the evil Noodle Syndicate, who are transforming all of the world's food into noodles; luckily, Papa PaRappa owns a dog-shaped jet in his bottomless basement which he can outfit with an anti-noodle ray, planning to attack in conjunction with a dessert-armed military force. PaRappa takes the lead in this offensive so that he can ensure his love interest, Sunny Funny, doesn't dump him after she calls him a "baby" for not wanting to eat any more noodles. No, really. That's the plot.

You can breeze through it in about an hour, maybe even less. Its eight stages are fun enough, but a couple blend into one another and become somewhat forgettable. There are memorable highlights in equal measure, though, but all this balance does is serve to underline a decidedly-average affair. I laughed a lot, but probably at it, rather than with it. Still got that burger song stuck in my head, mind.

And whilst the PS2 Classic conversion is pretty solid, and makes the game's 2D art style look good enough on an HD television, there are some issues. The primary one is input lag, something I never usually care about in your run-of-the-mill shooter or platformer but find crippling in a rhythm-based QTE game. I was tapping out the buttons in time with the beat, but there was a good half-second before PaRappa then rapped, the icons therefore landing late on the HUD. Having to train yourself to tap early, out-of-sync with the music, therefore makes for a learning curve more challenging than it should be.

If you get over 1,000 points in a level, you'll play an unskippable bonus level starring Chop Chop Master Onion, which is fun in a minimalist way the first time, but subsequently gets old fast. Complete the story once, and PaRappa's hat changes to blue, which indicates a slightly higher difficulty; complete it again (as I have) and his hat becomes pink, which is the highest difficult (and where I'll likely leave things for now). There are also Vs. Battles for each song, against the A.I. or playable in local multiplayer, and a Score Attack mode where you can try and beat your own records. Plenty to keep you busy for a long weekend, even if its sensory overload means you can only play in short bursts.

Perhaps it falls short of doing PaRappa's fan-favourite legacy proud, therefore, but it can also be a toe-tapping way to inject some variety into your gaming backlog. Worth a fiver, which is a shame as it's currently £7.99 on the PS Store. Not sure they ever discount PS2 Classics, either. Ah well.

That's the plot to PaRappa 2 @RogerRoger?! Wow that's pretty darn silly 😂

The PS2 classics are on sale quite frequently Rog from what I've seen. Pretty sure they were in the recent sale (Or maybe the one before, I definitely saw a few titles on offer sometime recently when I got Dragon's Crown)

I made out like a bandit the once with the titles Dark Cloud, Wild Arms 3 and Ape Escape 2 for under a tenner and it would've been like £32 if I bought them at the regular price 😂

@RogerRoger Thanks for the thoughts. One day I will play this game, but I don't know when that day will be, or what will cause me to finally play it. Perhaps when my inevitable midlife crisis arrives and I want to indulge my new-found taste for hip-hop with a dose of nostalgia.

At least it doesn't follow the trend of most sequels and make everything 'darker'. I was worried Parappa and his friends would be drawn into the dangerous world of gangland shootings and revenge drive-bys, culminating in a slow ballad performed by Sunny Funny at Parappa's funeral, while Cheap Cheap the Chicken prepares sausage rolls for the wake.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Oh, sweet; must be every other sale, when I'm not looking! Thanks for the heads-up. I think I've gotten all of the available PS2 Classics I'd ever want now, given that they haven't added to the list in years, but a low price on some might tempt me.

@Gremio108 Hey, you gotta believe!

Don't count your Cheap Cheaps until you've played it, though. There are quite a few bizarre twists and turns which may yet have you wishing for your darker scenario!

I started F.E.A.R tonight as I’ve recently bought a lovely pair of Sony XM3 headphones and wanted to play some horror games to really scare myself sh*tless. It’s really quite tense so far, despite being a wee bit too shooty for my tastes. The controls are mind-boggling too. L3 to crouch? R3 to zoom in? O to melee? To be fair, it’s from 2005 and was ported to PS3 but it holds up well. The sound design is very very good as well as the atmospheric lighting. It’ll be interesting to see more horror elements pop up as I get further.

@KratosMD I think I’m spoiled because of being used to CoD’s control scheme! It’s just baffling to me why the controls are like that but I guess most old school FPS games I’ve played are either on PC or only allow hip-firing.

after the news that Bleach Anime is coming back i'm in a huge Bleach mood right now so i'm playing some of my Bleach games such as Soul Resurrection on PS3 and The 3rd Phantom on DS

@FullbringIchigo Love it when a mood takes hold like that. Enjoy!

@RogerRoger i am although 3rd Phantom seems harder than i remember it being

Could just be because i haven't played a tactical RPG in a while

Playing FF7 and trying to finish it before the remake comes out. Self-isolation is definitely helping so I’m just about to fight (read: die against) Demon Wall. Wish me luck!

@nessisonett Good luck!

My best friend just picked up FFVII on Switch. It's apparently on sale to build hype.

@RogerRoger Can't believe I beat it first time. I had so many problems against it the first time but I got a few lucky Climhazzards in which did about 1500 damage a pop. Oh well, at least that's me on the final stretch of Disc 1!

I've started playing Resident Evil: Director's Cut as a PSone Classic on PS3.

Since its scares are no longer scary, rendered toothless and oddly charming by the steady march of time, I'm using it as a yardstick for broadening my gaming horizons. Survival horror has never, ever been my bag but the Resi franchise has reached such a level of cultural saturation that I feel remiss as a gamer not to have given it a fair shake. Not only that but, if I can stomach this, I can play similarly-structured games from the same era, like Chase the Express and Dino Crisis.

So I chose Chris Redfield and got underway. Have just met up with Rebecca Chambers and left her practicing the piano, whilst I go and try my new sword key on a few doors. Am playing on Training difficulty after a quick dabble on Normal saw me flirting with death way too soon.

@RogerRoger Oh dear, is that the one with the fart soundtrack? That might be the Dual Shock version, I get them confused.

I'm close to the end of DOOM 64. This game is fantastic!

Also, hours and hours of Animal Crossing. Although today has been kind of tedious: I'm trying to catch certain fish before they disappear for months, but the darn things are so rare that I keep coming up empty and have been burning through numerous fishing poles.