GravyThief

GravyThief

Catching up on PS1 and PS2 games...

Comments 251

Re: Rumour: PS Plus March 2020 PS4 Games Leaked Early

GravyThief

Over the past year I’ve played for the first time SotC, Last Guardian (both PS4) and ICO (PS3), and I thought they were wonderful. I just loved the worlds in each game, their atmosphere and the stories they told without any exposition. They are clunky, yes, but if you can get past that they are wonderful.

I really wish I’d experienced ICO and SotC in their original forms on the PS2 back in the day, I really missed out. I still intend to play SotC on the PS2, there’s just something epic about seeing it on that console!

Re: PSone Crushed the N64 Because of Depressing Games and Lonely Players

GravyThief

@Flaming_Kaiser well yes, that’s exactly what I used to do back in the day and what I do with my new games now. But unfortunately the PS1 games I buy are all used. I don’t know what some people do to their discs, it’s like they try to get them scratched, there’s no way you could get them in that state through normal wear and tear

Re: PSone Crushed the N64 Because of Depressing Games and Lonely Players

GravyThief

As someone who currently collects N64 and PS1 games (among others), I must say I’m glad Nintendo went with cartridges! With a proper clean, and a change of battery if needed, they run like new and will last for decades. I can’t say the same for PS1 CDs, they’re so hit or miss.

But of course cartridges were the wrong choice to make in the mid-90s, and Nintendo never recovered from it. The Gamecube, a great console with great games, still couldn’t succeed in the N64’s shadow. You could argue the N64 is the cause of Nintendo’s change of direction that we still see today, where they stay out of the arms race.

Re: Resident Evil 3 Team Is 'Determined to Surpass' Mr X with Nemesis

GravyThief

Still haven’t played the RE2 remake. I downloaded the demo over Xmas and gave it a shot, but couldn’t play it for long as the PS Pro fan noise was too loud. I had the same with Hellblade, but I drowned that out with headphones and it was a relatively short game. Not sure I’d want the fan to be going like that for RE2. Such a shame. I wonder why it’s so loud? I’ve just started the Witcher 3 and there’s hardly any fan noise.

Re: Red Dead Redemption 2 Tops 26 Million Copies, Grand Theft Auto 5 Continues to Be an Unstoppable Juggernaut

GravyThief

Those sales numbers for GTA V are insane. I must admit to being one of the few people with a PS4 who hasn’t bought this game. I just struggle to get into GTA games. I have a blast running around, picking fights, driving people over etc, but I never want to play the game properly. I’m just not that into real life/criminal style stories in games. One of the few it seems!

I do want to play Vice City at some point though. I do dig the whole 80’s vibe and music, and it makes it seem more fantasy than other GTA games.

Re: PS4 Is Now the Second Best Selling Home Console Ever

GravyThief

I remember so much mainstream press back in the day covering the sales of the Wii and PS2, it feels like these sales numbers have snuck up on us. On the other hand, it’s been out nearly 6 years with arguably the best selection of games of all current home consoles, so not that surprising really!

Re: Spyro Reignited Trilogy Will Eat Up 67.5GB of PS4 Hard Drive Space

GravyThief

Yes exactly. I’m very happy with HD (I actually only went to 1080p from 720p 18 months ago!) but at the same time I’m not going to pretend that 4K and HDR aren’t a noticeable change and big step up, just because I don’t have it.

I look forward to the time when a half decent OLED/4K/HDR TV set is in the sub £500 price range, as I’ll definitely jump on board then.

Re: Spyro Reignited Trilogy Will Eat Up 67.5GB of PS4 Hard Drive Space

GravyThief

@kyleforrester87 I see 4K (and HDR) a bit like VR. I would really love to sample it, spend a bit of time with it (not in a shop) and experience how great it is. However, I don’t have the cash to splash out on the equipment so I won’t go out of my way to sample it. I know that if I do, I’ll just have to spend loads of cash to get it!

Re: Poll: Are You a Fan of Gaming Magazines?

GravyThief

I’ve loved downloading PDFs of loads of old magazines that I could find online. I got Super Play, N64 and NGC (mostly the same team/writers), and TOTAL! magazine too. I’m now trying to find the earliest issues of GamesTM as I used to buy that when it first came out.

It’s more of a nostalgia thing for me. I remember magazines back in the day, so I enjoy reading the old ones, but I have no interest in new ones now. I think it’s because the internet didn’t really exist back in the day, so to get people’s views of the games from that time, you have to go to the magazines. Nowadays you can find old, archived articles and reviews from websites going back to the early 2000’s or even the late 90’s.

I still buy printerd media for video games, but not magazines. I like to buy the encyclodpedia or anthology type books that do the rounds, like those from Bitmap books. Some great stuff in those, and the artwork or photos will always beat the internet.

Re: PS4 Downloads Account for 2.7 Per Cent of Global Internet Traffic

GravyThief

@Bad-MuthaAdebisi I know what you mean. My household mostly watches Netflix, but recently we’ve tried watching UK programmes via the 3 main online services/apps, and my goodness I didn’t realise how far behind they are compared to Netflix. Using iPlayer, All4 and ITV Hub was like going back a decade, with the worst of user interfaces. ITV Hub is by far the worst. It’s not available on any games console I own, I had to use the Amazon Fire TV stick. And when we finally did get it working, it kept hanging and crashing so many times it took us 2 hours to watch an hour show. Luckily a lot their shows end up on Netflix anyway, so I’ll probably stick to that.

Re: Kingdom Hearts Tells 'The Story So Far' with Complete Edition on PS4

GravyThief

I get so lost with these games, but I want to understand it for when my daughter is old enough to enjoy watching me playing these, with all the Disney characters and whatnot.

How is this 6 games? Aren’t 1.5, 2.5 and 2.8 just three games? And what about the DS/3DS games? Aren’t they counted as part of the main story so hence excluded from this ‘complete (so far)’ collection?

Re: Guide: All PlayStation Classic Mini Games

GravyThief

Klonoa. I’ve just finished playing it and I loved every minute of it. Can’t believe I missed that one back in the day, I would have loved it. Having it on this mini console will ensure others get to be as pleasantly surprised by it as I was.

Re: Talking Point: Should Sony Adopt Pre-Recorded Press Conferences?

GravyThief

As someone who’s been predominantly Nintendo only for the last few years, I’ve always liked the Nintendo Directs, because they’re just condensed announcements about games and hardware. Of course, they’ll only ever be as good as their content, but all live shows seem to be good for these days are memes.

It does mean you don’t get the awesome spectacles like when Nintendo revealed Twilight Princess, but these are few and far between.

As final point, Directs are definitely more accessible too. This year, despite me being more interested in the Sony side of things, I still watched the Nintendo Direct but didn’t watch Sony’s conference, because I have no interest in watching all that fluff. I just read the articles and trailers as they popped up on here. Nintendo’s E3 Direct was pants of course, but that goes back to them only being as good as their content. The format is far superior in my opinion.

Re: Poll: Do We Still Need Review Scores?

GravyThief

Hardly anybody reads or writes full words or sentences anymore, so of course the poll is going to show a ‘yes’.

I’ve never understood reviews having scores. It’s somebody’s opinion. Read it.

Re: 19 Years Later, the PS2 Is Officially Done, Dead, Finished as Sony Ends Customer Support

GravyThief

I missed out on the PS2 at the time. I was 100% Nintendo and Gamecube, which I loved and still do. At the time the PS2 didn’t hold much appeal to me, I only really saw it as the console that had GTA, Need for speed etc, games that hold zero appeal to me.

How wrong I was.

I now have one and playing massive catch up. ICO, SotC, Silent Hill 2, Odin Sphere, Sly Cooper (awesome franchise), Ratchet/Clank, Jak & Daxter, God of War, all the other ‘horror’ games like the suffering, haunting ground, rule of rose, siren, project Zero, echo night 2. Oh, and something called Metal Gear Solid. The list goes on and on!

Re: Review: Shenmue I & II (PS4)

GravyThief

@LaNooch1978 nope, but because of those limitations, games had certain characteristics that were present as a result of those limitations, rather than being there by design. A bit like the fog in Silent Hill; a necessity due to limitations of the hardware at the time, but all the better for it. Door opening animations in Resident Evil, necessary to hide loading screens but they added to the tension. Of course those things may have been included by design anyway, but the hardware of the time helped make that choice for them.

I’m not saying limited hardware is better (it’s not of course), but I do like it when it makes developers think outside the box and we get a better game for it. I think remasters shouldn’t remove those aspects when being made on more powerful hardware. And back to SotC, the PS4 remake feels like it’s lost something in the transition, a “feeling” I get from the original but not the remake. I’m rambling now, but hopefully you see where I’m coming from.

Re: Review: Shenmue I & II (PS4)

GravyThief

Hopefully by the time I get around to playing this, they’ve sorted out the bugs. It’s reasons such as this I always prefer playing games on original hardware vs. remasters. If it’s not bugs causing issues, it’s the fact they lose the original feeling of the game. At least with this they seem to have kept it pretty much untouched except for making it look better on a modern display, which is always welcome.

A good case in point is the Shadow of the Colossus remake I’m currently playing. It’s great, don’t get me wrong, and I’m really enjoying it, but from what I’ve played of the PS2 original (I’ve only done up to the first Colossus), the PS4 remake is completely missing that eerie/ethereal atmosphere the original has. It doesn’t feel like the same world at all. I know much of the original feeling was due to hardware constraints (eg excessive use of bloom lighting), but it’s enough for me to want play the original after I’ve completed the remake, just to experience the game how it was meant to be.

Re: Take Advantage of PS4's Multimedia Apps with the New Cloud Remote

GravyThief

I could do with a remote for the PS4. I watch a lot of Netflix and Amazon Prime from the console, and am always accidentally doing a fast forward or rewind because of the triggers. I wish they let you reconfigure the buttons, then I’d be happy using the DS4.

On a side note, has anyone noticed how every video app except Netflix have awful user interfaces? I can never find anything on Amazon by browsing, BBC iPlayer is just every kind of terrible, and all of them need about 5 presses of the circle button to pause or exit the video. They should all just copy Netflix and be done with it.

Re: PS4 Firmware Update 6.0 Seems to Finally Change PlayStation Store Search Function

GravyThief

I was new to PS3/PS4 at the start of this year, and frankly I never realised this was such an issue for people. I actually thought it was good. I can certainly use it faster than an on screen keyboard with a joypad, especially how it removes letters that you can’t use as you type more of the search terms.

My main issue with the search is that when you search for a game, it can bring up 100’s of different results, especially where they have lots of cr*p associated with them like avatars. Also, for PS3 and the website store, it’s impossible to only search for PS1 or PS2 games, so unless you know exactly the game you want, you can’t just browse all PS1/PS2 games.

Re: Hands On: Is Shenmue I & II a Knock Out on PS4?

GravyThief

My Amazon preorder should be here tomorrow, although they haven’t taken payment yet so I hope there isn’t a delay.

I’ve never played these before and I’m not likely to get a Dreamcast at any point so I’m glad they’ve kept it as close to the originals as it sounds like they have done. I play more retro games than modern games these days, so no issue with anything being regarded as dated. Looking forward to experiencing a game I never thought I would!

Re: PS4 Pro Stock Running Low in the United States

GravyThief

@Lloydeeee I was being a bit flippant as I replied above, it’s not that bad. It’s on Fallout 4 I notice it go into overdrive for no real reason.

I have never owned any Xbox console so I don’t have much of an opinion on them. I’ve always had more than my fill from Nintendo and Playstation. I do like what they’re doing with backwards compatibility on the X1X, I’d like Sony to take a leaf from their book for the PS5.

I don’t think I’d ever be able to use an Xbox controller if I ever did get an Xbox console. I’m so used to Nintendo’s ABXY layout I’d always be pressing the wrong button when prompted. I already get the X button muddled up between Nintendo and Playstation games!

Re: PS4 Pro Stock Running Low in the United States

GravyThief

@Kidfried to be fair I’m being a tad flippant, as it’s only about 6 months old and it only goes really loud on occasion. Fallout 4 during conversations seems to be its favourite time to kick the fans into overdrive, no idea why. Must be that efficient Bethesda code or something.

Re: June 2018 NPD: PS4 Outsells All Current-Gen Competitors

GravyThief

If Sony do a PS1 classic, I fully expect FMV cutscenes to skip, and for numerous hangs on the Sony/Playstation start up screens for that authentic nostalgic experience. Also, it will need some form of gyro to detect when you turn it upside down to get some games to play.

Re: Japanese Sales Charts: Mega Man X Dashes into Number 1 on PS4

GravyThief

I’ve never been able to get into Mega Man games. I don’t hold any nostalgia for them as never played them when they first came out. I recently tried getting into both Megaman 2 and Megaman X, but found him quite slow and cumbersome to control. I struggled with not being able to aim diagonally or upwards.

I was similar with Castlevania, could never get into them, but thankfully that changed a couple of years ago and I am now a big fan of that series. There are some great games with great music too.

Maybe one day I’ll come back to Mega Man and it will click.

Re: Embrace 90s Nostalgia with SEGA Mega Drive's Free PSVR Patch

GravyThief

I think this is a great idea! I’d love to try it out if I had VR. In fact I’d just love to try out VR full stop. This reminds me, I still need to get a Mega Drive and the Mega Everdrive for my retro gaming setup. It’s currently biased towards Nintendo and Playstation, it needs some SEGA love.