Current gaming

[delicatemoth]

https://twitter.com/olivebrinker/status/1166781198825377793

[hobbes]

The only real difficulty spikes I've encountered are the boss fights, which can be bullshit, though I have occasionally got too cocky in general combat. Dying doesn't lose you any progress beyond having to navigate back to where you were, so it's not so bad.

A couple of times I've had to battle through a previous set of goons to get back to the fight I died in. That's proper annoying.

I don't envy you playing on PS4 though. Apparently the performance is pretty terrible (can't imagine the loading times are fun either) and of course you don't get all the lovely raytracing.

I've not seen it on PC obviously, but it's fine on PS4 Pro. (I nearly got it in the XBoneX as it's more graphically powerful, but it came with freebies on PS4.)
About twice I've had screen judder, but only right after fast travelling so it doesn't hurt. I've not noticed any dramatic fall offs when fighting and of course it's in a finite arena so pop-ups aren't an issue. All in all I've been pretty impressed with performance

[hobbes]

I've just had a look at what ray tracing does. It sounds really impressive but looking at the before and after pictures, I'm not sure I can tell the difference. I'm certain that's just me, of course.

[Ginger Yellow]

Ah, didn't realise you had a Pro. That should be fine.

[hobbes]

Ahhhh! I'm stuck again on the penultimate mission. My fault this time, I think I was too tired last night to strategise.

[hobbes]

I've had to put Control down for a bit. For the first time ever I felt a bit of a twang in my wrist. Not too painful, but it's persisted a couple of days. I think it must be the control combination or something. Last thing I want is carpal tunnel...

[Toby Gymshorts]

I'm also playing Control on PS4 Pro and thoroughly enjoying it. Taking my time, exploring every single inch of every new area, loving the aesthetic and the oppressive, creepy atmosphere. Highly recommended.

Also - the stutters are noticeable on Pro after fast travel (as hobbes said) and when coming out of pause menus. Otherwise it's pretty stable and it looks great on my OLED screen.

[johnr]

We're playing Hohokum and Erica in our flat. Very contrasting - one a frippery, the other quite intense - so very complimentary.

[hobbes]

I've totally hit a brick wall on Control. Took a few days off to give my wrist a rest and couldn't get any further.
So I went back to do a few side missions etc. To build up skills and get back into it. And I can't do any of them either. Either there's been a big jump in difficulty in a game that was set too difficult anyway, or I've completely lost the ability.

It's a beautiful game and one I really want to like, but it would be better if it was more balanced or had a settable difficulty.
I'm wishing I'd bought it on disk so I could sell it on as I can't see myself bring able to finish it. And if a game is too difficult to finish, then the publishers are kind of cheating you.

[Guy Profumo]

If anyone has a PC with a 20-series graphics card, I definitely recommend picking up Control. The gameplay is fine, but it looks stunning with raytracing on, and is totally going to become the new Crysis in terms of crushing graphics cards if you turn up the settings.

To quote Homer Simpson, "what's he talking about?"

[Freestyling buck wilding Stijn Stijnen]

Earth Defence Force 2025 is available for free to Xbox gold subbers through September, and I'm pretty sure that nobody's had as much fun as me playing a game this month.
The premise is simple (kill waves and waves of giant bugs and increasingly large robots), it's a game that's huge in Japan but not so much in the west, and it's basically a distilled form of every badly-dubbed Japanese monster movie, right down to the bad translations leading to some baffling dialogue.
The gameplay is ludicrous on toast, everything is cranked up to 11, I don't recall such a fun array of weapons, oh and there are constant battle cries of 'EDF!', leading to a personal headcanon where EDF energy have been tasked with saving the earth while providing competitive tariffs for whatever homes survive.

[Toby Gymshorts]

On Control: I've made it as far as the Threshold mission without levelling up the gun (or unlocking other forms) or upgrading any abilities. This seems to stem from early reviews of the game where they said *make sure you save your upgrade points for later in the game". No spoilers wanted, please, but - how late are we talking here?

[Toby Gymshorts]

But otherwise it's a game that has really grabbed me for the first time in ages. I actively make time to play it, as opposed to putting something on when I have 10 minutes.

I really, REALLY, dig the atmosphere.

[hobbes]

Got halfway through "Polaris" and 2 or 3 side missions before hitting the wall.
Now I don't seem to be able to do any thing including sides.

[Wouter D]

Pretty sure I'll be playing lots of this. Review here.

[Toby Gymshorts]

I am so downloading that. It's got a dedicated honk button!

[Freestyling buck wilding Stijn Stijnen]

Earth Defence Force 2025 is available for free to Xbox gold subbers through September, and I'm pretty sure that nobody's had as much fun as me playing a game this month.
The premise is simple (kill waves and waves of giant bugs and increasingly large robots), it's a game that's huge in Japan but not so much in the west, and it's basically a distilled form of every badly-dubbed Japanese monster movie, right down to the bad translations leading to some baffling dialogue.
The gameplay is ludicrous on toast, everything is cranked up to 11, I don't recall such a fun array of weapons, oh and there are constant battle cries of 'EDF!', leading to a personal headcanon where EDF energy have been tasked with saving the earth while providing competitive tariffs for whatever homes survive.

I've moved on to Earth Defence Force: Heavy rain, and it's more of the same, just cranked up to 11.
Going back to first one, I hadn't gotten that far into it when recommending it, and hadn't been introduced to one of the more fun aspects of an already fun game, namely as I started to get far more powerful weapons; the weapons could destroy the various buildings dotted around the levels. You can level everything!
You could play GTA V and be armed with a rocket launcher, but if it hits a building nothing happens. Not so On earth defence force, and the janky comedy physics leads to the whole experience being pure fun, yet incredibly frenetic and challenging, while never losing that sense of fun.
my days, this game has everything you could ask for.
And I knew it anyway, but playing this game and comparing it to most reviews will remind you of how up their own asses most reviewers are with their lukewarm 6 out of 10's. This game is functionally perfect for what it sets out to do.

[Freestyling buck wilding Stijn Stijnen]

Oh, and xbox gamepass is really, really good. It took them forever, but microsoft finally rolled out something that's worth a wank.
it's netflix for xbox, back when netflix had large amounts of variety on it.
Really enjoying the outer wilds, which is a game that leaves everything for you to work out, while being intuitive and interesting.

[Freestyling buck wilding Stijn Stijnen]

The Outer Worlds came out today.
Today is a very good day.

[Freestyling buck wilding Stijn Stijnen]

Oh, The Outer Worlds, oh very much oh.
There's choice, there's consequence to those choices, a wicked sense of humour running through it, it's a proper, proper one player RPG.
All of this makes complete sense as the two main men behind this game - Tim Cain (creator and one of the main designers of Fallout) and Leonard Boyarsky (the man responsible for the iconic art work associated with fallout. Think power armor, vault boy, the amazing vault designs) and obsidian games, makers of Fallout New Vegas, one of the best games ever have given them free rein to do their thang.

[Freestyling buck wilding Stijn Stijnen]

The outer worlds, so many interesting characters, underlying stories, things to work out for yourself via rumours and whispers.
it's really opened up, and I now have side quest pie all over my face.
this is luxury RPG-ing, people!
And it's utterly gorgeous to look at.

[Freestyling buck wilding Stijn Stijnen]

Feast your eyes on the glorious madness that is Earth Defence Force 2025. No fall damage should be an option to toggle on and off in all games.

[URL="https://twitter.com/JimothyAllen/status/1188522728569085959"]https://twitter.com/JimothyAllen/sta...22728569085959[/URL]

[hobbes]

I’ve been playing Death Stranding. I don’t think a game could be more different to EDF 2025.
so far out of 4 hours, I reckon 3 of them have been trudging. It’s like the boring riding bits of RDR2 without the horse and in real time.

[hobbes]

Wow. This thread has died a death.
I don’t think it helps having a single video game thread that’s continually knocked off the page by the multitude of sports guessing ones.

Anyway, Death Stranding is one of those games that’s a grim satisfaction rather than a joy. By which I mean, spend a couple of hours playing Spider-Man or HZD or Witcher etc. And there’s fun in the mechanics of the game. Just webbing around in Spider-Man is exhilarating.
Stranding is a long (beautiful looking) grind where the combat sections are an irritating distraction that it’d actually be more fun without. When the BTs show up you either have to creep about spending 20 minutes trying to pick them off one by one or stealthing away from them taking huge and annoying detours, or just take the medicine and charge them and have to smash up a boss for 5 minutes before carrying on as before.

Laying a road so you can travel from one site to another though and doing all the deliveries by truck is quite a feat. I laid a whole route north to south which made life much much easier early in the game before I hit mountains.
and yet, I’ve still put 40 or 50 hours into it making just one more delivery every time I want to put it down.

[Freestyling buck wilding Stijn Stijnen]

I think the lack of posts reflect the average age of who posts here, they just don't understand this nerd talk.
How are you getting on with death stranding? It looked very frustrating from what I saw.
Outer worlds has been completed, and it was a joy from start to finish, with every choice I made having a direct affect on the ending I received.
I can see me going back to playing it again as a bit more of a bastard, as this game really does allow you to play it however you like, thanks to no NPC's being set to 'essential' or just being plain unkillable as you get with most games, which would essentially break were you to kill a protagonist or antagonist. To that end, it is the opposite of red dead redemption 2, which doesn't even let you leave the first area without killing you for daring to want to roam... In an open world game... Nope, you can just go and be a dick to everybody if you wish on the outer worlds. Not that you should, mind you, but if you want to do an RPG right, then at least provide the option.
Now deciding whether to play Metro:exodus, kingdom come: deliverance, or most likely my friend pedro, an ultraviolent side-scrolling shooter with some very tricksy mechanics, which is avaable via gamepass on the xbox and looks like an absolute hoot of a game, and could serve as a nice counter to the dialogue heavy outer worlds which got my brain working on many an occasion.