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Onhell said:
I have the Arkham games on my wishlist so... One day lol
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They should be cheap now, so definitely get them as soon as you can! Arkham Asylum and City are some of the best games of the 360 generation, and Origins is pretty solid. Arkham Knight is decent, but is definitely hindered by the awful overuse of the batmobile that drags the game and makes it more difficult/un-fun.
 
Jer said:
Finished up Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which was good but short. (To be expected, since it was a discount title from the jump.) The plot had some major problems (waaaaay too convenient that the people closest to Miles just happen to have access to crazy technology that they could never reasonably afford), but I do give them credit for not throwing the businessman antagonist into any kind of combat situation with you, which would be the typical trope (“Ha ha, you think you’ve beaten me, but look at my never-before-seen power suit that I can final-battle you with!!!”). I look forward to playing Spider-Man 2, but I’ll wait for the inevitable GOTY edition to get down to $20 first.
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Agree with the Morales statement. I wish it was longer, but since it was a spin-off and slightly cheaper, I wasn't surprised.

I am excited to play Spider-Man 2, but since I don't have a PS5, and I'm a cheap (aka smart) gamer like you, I would wait for the price to go significantly down even if I had a PS5.
 
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Riggatoni said:
They should be cheap now, so definitely get them as soon as you can! Arkham Asylum and City are some of the best games of the 360 generation, and Origins is pretty solid. Arkham Knight is decent, but is definitely hindered by the awful overuse of the batmobile that drags the game and makes it more difficult/un-fun.
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They're on sale ALL THE TIME for like 85% off. Oddly, one of the reasons I keep putting them off and getting games that rarely go on sale, let alone steep ones.
 
I actually got all Arkham games for free a few years ago through EGS if I remember correctly. Haven't played them yet though.
 
My brother and I still working our way through our NHL18 playoff. We had an absolutely ridiculous game, probably our highest scoring game ever. 20 goals between the two, he beat me 12 to 8. Recently, I was up 4-1 and somehow lost 6-4. While frustrating I do the exact same thing to him lol, literally no lead is safe.

We haven't gone back to Borderlands, so I created a new character and I'm playing it solo. I had bought the Pandora Box on sale where I essentially got each game for like 100 pesos, couldn't pass it up. I was very confused, because I basically forgot that all the DLC was included. I entered this new area, Tartarus Station and was like, "Huh, don't remember this from when I played it on 360." Well, of course not, I didn't purchase any DLC for the 360 games. In short, it's been a blast. It's a little frustrating how slow it is to get the game going, but once it does, it's a blast. Tartarus Station was a hoot, then I did the zombie island of Dr. Ned and I was riding a DLC high and jumped into T-Bone Junction and died immediately LOL. the difficulty level SPIKED. I basically walked through the other two as I was already level 20 and all the missions were level 16. But in the T-Bone DLC the first mission is level 35.

I went back to the main story missions lol. Cleared the Arid badlands, moved on to the next stage. While it is way more fun in co-op, I am having a really good time solo.
 
I'm now about 30 hours into Lies Of P, and it's still essentially a slightly easier reskin of Bloodborne at 60fps with a few minor gameplay and meta tweaks and no multiplayer, but it's been consistently enjoyable.

If I have any complaints it's about the nature of the weapon variety -- there are too many slow greatsword-type weapons, and there's not a ton of differentiation between the weapons on damage or stat scaling (there are essentially strength and dexterity stats called different things, and almost all weapons scale with them at B/D, C/C, or D/B, and then there's a third stat called "advance" that factors into scaling with some of them, but that's it). Basically I found a slightly better weapon relatively early on, made a couple of minor modifications to it, and I haven't had any reason to change it since then, even for the supposedly superior weapons forged from boss souls (sorry, boss "ergo").

I guess there are also too many different status effects (there are essentially 3-5 different things that all amount to the same thing as poison, but have different resistance stats, and it becomes annoying to manage all of them, though enemies in a particular area only tend to work with 2-3 of them at a time). And some of the best amulets are super-heavy, so you have to dump a lot of stat points into your endurance (I'm sorry, "capacity") to actually use them.

I do like some of the customization options, like the little perks you can install on your character that unlock more significant perks, like getting an extra estus flask (I'm sorry, "pulse cell"), or adding a ring slot (I'm sorry, "amulet slot"). You can improve some behaviors around the edges in areas that interest you, which allows for some useful fine-tuning. You can also totally respec your character past a certain point in the game using renewable currency, so you can experiment with other builds freely, though I haven't bothered to yet.

All of that said, the core gameplay is still quite good, if overly familiar. They really aped the style of Bloodborne in almost every possible way, down to the fonts, the music, and even the approach to voice acting and dialogue.
 
Oh man, I feel so bad, after buying a few games on holiday sales, some games that rarely go on sale popped up for me last night. I've had these games on my wish list for easily 3 to 4 years and they have NEVER been on sale, so while not the smartest financial decision to start the new year I got them lol. Among them are Shovel Knight, Cuphead, River City Girls and other indie games with interesting aesthetics, art direction and music.

I also finished Borderlands solo. It was oddly a lot of fun and now I'm doing side content that I missed. I ended the game level 44, so obviously I'd have to replay it if I want to get to Level 61 and kill the one uber boss in the last DLC. So I think I'll use this character with the playthrough I'm doing with my brother.

I started on Shovel Knight instead of all the other games on my back catalog and I really like it. Very Mega Man/DuckTales with a touch of Mario 3.
 
Yeah, Shovel Knight is awesome. IIRC they got really close to making it playable on a real NES, but the final game uses a few concepts that are too advanced for the actual hardware.

I reinstalled God Of War Ragnarök to play the Valhalla DLC. I'm not a big fan of roguelites, but this one has a story focus, so I'm enjoying it quite a bit.
 
Shovel Knight is absolutely fantastic, killer soundtrack too. Get the Treasure Trove edition if you haven't already, it gives you the option to play the story mode as the Plague Knight, Spectre Knight and King Knight. The levels are identical for the Plague Knight's story but the latter two have their own unique levels and all of them expand on the main story and lore, Plague's was my favourite.
 
Vaenyr said:
IIRC they got really close to making it playable on a real NES, but the final game uses a few concepts that are too advanced for the actual hardware.
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I've noticed that is very common with many retro-looking games. They're either too massive, or some of the animations are just waaay over what an NES can handle. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon is one I can think of off the top of my head.

Edington said:
Shovel Knight is absolutely fantastic, killer soundtrack too. Get the Treasure Trove edition if you haven't already, it gives you the option to play the story mode as the Plague Knight, Spectre Knight and King Knight. The levels are identical for the Plague Knight's story but the latter two have their own unique levels and all of them expand on the main story and lore, Plague's was my favourite.
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Yup, that's what I got. Already beat King Knight and Spectre Knight. I've also fished in the first pond area. Tried doing the Forest of Phasing, but keep dying, so I'll try later after advancing the story a bit.
 
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Still making my way through Shovel Knight. I'm really enjoying it, there is a slight difficulty curve with some of the platforming and items, but it doesn't take long to "get it." I usually do a level or two and then set it down. Because of the "get good," element it does take a bit out of me.

On the other hand played River City Girls twice, the normal playthrough and then New Game plus. Best beat 'em up I've played since the NES. I LOVE the Double Dragon Trilogy for the NES, Streets of Rage, Final Fight, etc. I even got River City Ransom a while ago and while very engaging with it's money and store system, doesn't have the "it" factor Double Dragon did, at least for me. This game though, River City Girls, is a great remake/homage to all of those games. It has a ton of Double Dragon references as well as to other games, hell, one of the achievements is "master of unlocking," which made me laugh remembering the horrible line delivery by Barry in the original Resident Evil. It's everything I thought Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was going to be and more. Definitely getting the sequels at some point. For now, back to Shovel Knight.
 
Finished Shovel Knight. I really like that while it's challenging it's consistent and you "get good" fairly quickly. I'm currently alternating between a New Game + run and my first playthrough of Plague Knight. I'm finding his platforming fairly difficult, but it's definitely not a design issue, it's a skill issue on my part, but like with Shovel Knight as I continue to play it's just a matter of getting the hang of it. Like many of the retro-inspired games I've played lately, from Sea of Stars to Narita Boy, Shovel Knight is scratching a very specific itch the franchises they are inspired on haven't in a long time. Like, I've tried to make my way through Mega Man 9 and 10 and it's just not the same. They LOOK like classic Mega Man, but some design choices make no sense. Like taking away the slide and mega buster, as well as the random spikes in difficulty. I keep going back to the first 4 games when I want to get the peak Mega Man experience. What I'm really enjoying is I can sit with the game at the end of the work day, play a level and set it down still feeling like I accomplished something. I really like that, I don't feel like I need to set aside a huge chunk of time to "work through it" and I can either spend an afternoon or 30 minutes with it and it's just as fun.

I'm going to spend considerable amount of time with Shovel Knight between collectibles, multiple playthroughs and all the DLCs, but I do have Nier: Automata and Cuphead queued up.
 
I'm fully hooked on Shovel knight. I played Plague Knight and Spectre Knight practically back to back and have done through the first tavern in King Knight. I love the variety in the game play, how each knight has a unique set of moves and the levels are remixed. The music is phenomenal. From the original game, my favorites are the song for the entrance of the fortress and the one the lady dances in celebration. From Plague Knight a Walz for One which Mona dances when she thinks we're not around. From Spectre Knight, the whole thing. Something about the versions of the songs for his playthrough were top notch.

I like that King Knight is playing a card tournament, I'm a sucker for mini-games. I spent more time Playing Gwent in Witcher III and checkers in AC Black Flag than questing lol. this is no exception. I've been playing matches with Cardia getting my ass whooped royally (pun intended), but it's a good way to learn the moves and how to best use my deck.

I've also set up New Game + for the previous games, but decided to leave them for when I want to replay them and still get something new out of them, without the stress of purchases or collectathons.
 
Finally finished Lies Of P last night after being stuck on the final boss fight for an inordinate amount of time. I guess the final fight is technically optional, but it still felt cheap to have such a massive difficulty spike at the very end of the game. I actually had to respec my character and significantly change my loadout and play style to have any hope of beating that douche, and then I still needed a fair amount of luck to pull it all together in the end.

I’ve never been much of a parrier in Soulslikes, but I was literally required to become one to beat this final boss, since he’s relentlessly aggressive in his final form, and parrying (sorry, “perfect guarding”) is the only way to avoid taking damage when blocking. I did have a grindstone with a couple of uses that temporarily turned all of my blocks into auto-parries, but that only gets you through about half of the fight, and you have to do the rest manually. I also had to burn a shit ton of throwable items on the guy to whittle his health down and stagger him more often.

Anyway, final sour taste aside, the game was an enjoyable Bloodborne clone. There’s incentive to play a NG+ to get the alternate items for each of the boss souls, or to close out certain story paths you may have botched the first time through, but my backlog is too deep and I think I’ve pretty much gotten my fill of the game now, so I’ll be moving on.
 
I am now about 110 hours into my playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3, with still plenty to do in ACT III. Easily the best game I've played in a very long time. I'm a huge huge fan of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and while 3 is its own thing, it stands right up there with them.
 
So, after finishing GOW Valhalla (was surprisingly good, though the last couple of trophies that required three more runs after the story finished dragged. Still not a fan of rogue-lites) I've started my first playthrough of Dark Souls II and have played a couple dozen of hours.

It's quite funny: Before starting any of the Souls games I knew that Demon's was the weird one, Dark Souls I the beloved one and DS2 the black sheep. I absolutely loved my playthrough of Demon's. DS1 was fun as well, but it felt like a lesser copy of DeS at every part. It's still a great game, but it disappointed me somewhat. I can't help but to feel it's a bit overrated.

DS2 on the other hand I'm liking much more. It changed a few things in very interesting ways, for example durability now gets restored whenever you rest at a bonfire. You can also freely warp to every bonfire you've visited. There's now a mechanic where enemies permanently despawn (except if you're in a certain covenant) if you killed them 10 to 15 times, so if you keep dying to a boss you can despawn the area to make the boss run more tolerable. Also, you can freely change covenants without penalty now. The music is a clear upgrade as well (after DS1 being a massive disappointment compared to DeS's amazing soundtrack). The lore seems more interesting as well and it's a shame, that as far as I know, DS3 mostly deals with DS1, while 2 gets ignored.

Of course, it has its issues as well. They had to redesign a lot of the areas quite extensively because their plans for many areas were far too ambitios for the PS3 back then. There are plenty of areas where you get ambushed by a group of enemies and the way they've reworked how aggroing enemies works makes these feel quite unfair. Also, the Black Gulch was a thankfully short but miserable experience. Probably my least favorite area in a Souls game so far.
 
Vaenyr said:
DS2 on the other hand I'm liking much more. It changed a few things in very interesting ways, for example durability now gets restored whenever you rest at a bonfire. You can also freely warp to every bonfire you've visited. There's now a mechanic where enemies permanently despawn (except if you're in a certain covenant) if you killed them 10 to 15 times, so if you keep dying to a boss you can despawn the area to make the boss run more tolerable. Also, you can freely change covenants without penalty now. The music is a clear upgrade as well (after DS1 being a massive disappointment compared to DeS's amazing soundtrack). The lore seems more interesting as well and it's a shame, that as far as I know, DS3 mostly deals with DS1, while 2 gets ignored.
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DS 2 was really special and my experience, memories and emotions are stronger than from DS 3 in a way. An unfairly maligned game and rather unique one, as far as the other fromsoft games go.

In a way, I'd say that Elden Ring is a continuation of 2, much like DS 3 felt like a continuation of 1.
Similar things with ER:
- the focus is much more on visual design, vistas, and general atmosphere than functional level design of 1 and 3
- connected with the previous - a bigger focus on discovery and a relatively large world with a lot of backtracking, unlike the somewhat linear dungeons of 1 and 3
- people hated it, because they misunderstood a certain key aspect of gameplay (adaptability in 2, breaking enemies' poise in ER)
- the atmosphere is much more a sorrowful high fantasy than the usual dark fantasy of 1 and 3
- there's a bigger focus on story and storytelling than in 1 and 3
- powerstancing (of sorts)

Needs more love.

Vaenyr said:
Of course, it has its issues as well. They had to redesign a lot of the areas quite extensively because their plans for many areas were far too ambitios for the PS3 back then. There are plenty of areas where you get ambushed by a group of enemies and the way they've reworked how aggroing enemies works makes these feel quite unfair. Also, the Black Gulch was a thankfully short but miserable experience. Probably my least favorite area in a Souls game so far.
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Yep, the game is quite gank heavy, but IMHO manageable, especially with the option to whittle down the enemies to stop respawning them. The only area I haven't managed in my typical "no shield, no cheese, no summons" approach was Horsefuck Valley - with the gank boss at the end, I just tried it several times one afteroon and then said "fuck it" and brought the NPC summons, because I didn't feel the joy in overcoming the challenge there.

(oh, also if you haven't played the DLCs, those are must-play... except for the aforementioned Horsefuck Valley, that is)



Anyway, a good friend of mine got me an old PS4 for Christmas, so that I could play Bloodborne, but I haven't been playing much recently, with the health issues (which are connected with eyesight as well), so both Bloodborne and Lies of P (and Baldur's Gate 1 and Pillars of Eternity 1 for that matter) are currently lying in wait.

I've played just a little bit of Assassin's Creed 2, and re-started Pentiment one evening, but not much playing in general as of now.

Looking forward to revisiting the Witcher series once I feel better and finish the books and I'd really love to get to Baldur's Gate 3 one of these days.
 
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