Now Playing (Video Games)

Finished Borderlands 2. I would alternate between side quests and main quests as well as DLC and main game. I still have a few challenge DLC/main game sidequests to complete and two post-game DLC like Tina's DnD mission and the the defense of Sanctuary one. It was nice to play through it again, I had forgotten a few things like the exact ending and a few other amusing tid bits like the robot that wanted to be human and the wild shit he says lol. Like, "I am human and feel lonely, I will seek companionship only to later seek alone time" LOL. The way it ends makes me even more hesitant about Borderlands 3. Nothing I need to worry about any time soon as I'm going to finish up the remaining DLC and sidequests, then move on to the Pre-Sequel and THEN BL3, but still.... by all accounts it's not that great. Then again, I thought Dead Space 3 was going to be a hot pile of garbage and it was a lot of fun. Sure it was a big step down from the previous two, but still fun.
 
So, after four playthroughs of Lies of P - the first game I've ever Platinum'd - I've decided not to wait until I finish the books (I still have, like, 40 % of the seventh book before me, Sapkowski is absolutely killing me, I definitely hate it by now) and started Witcher 1 over weekend.

I've done the prologue and the first two chapters.

Like, first impession was - wow, this game is janky as fuck. Indeed, since the first Gothic I don't recall another game that would have as its hardest obstacle not putting it down in the first 30 minutes.

BUT, the game has its charm and I must say I'm quite addicted after all. CD Projekt Red still has problems with pacing (the entire second half of the second chapter, with discovering the 10 sephiroth and unlocking the tower for ... nothing felt really bloated, but overall it has the charm I saw in Witcher 3.
 
So, after four playthroughs of Lies of P - the first game I've ever Platinum'd - I've decided not to wait until I finish the books (I still have, like, 40 % of the seventh book before me, Sapkowski is absolutely killing me, I definitely hate it by now) and started Witcher 1 over weekend.

I decided to wait for the remake/remaster. But I do want to play 1-3 at some point. I've also decided to wait for the Max Payne 1 and 2 remakes. I can buy them on xbox (while on Steam Max Payne one is not purchasable due to needing some sort of code/key.)

I finished all of Borderlands II except for the Tiny Tina Bunkers and Badasses DLC. I'm in no rush as I did it as a stand alone. I did start the pre-sequel with Claptrap, but all his skills suck. They work as traditional RPG perks with each advantage being paired with some SEVERE disadvantages. So I restarted with Athena. I'll probably be alternating between that and the Tina DLC for now.
 
I decided to wait for the remake/remaster. But I do want to play 1-3 at some point. I've also decided to wait for the Max Payne 1 and 2 remakes. I can buy them on xbox (while on Steam Max Payne one is not purchasable due to needing some sort of code/key.)

After the Mafia 1 remake, which was precisely what I worried it would be, a wholly competent soulless drone without an ounce of the charm of the original, I'm probably not playing these. Especially Max Payne - those two games have a really special place in my heart, historically speaking, one of my all-time favourites. I worry how it'll end up.
But that's just me.
 
After the Mafia 1 remake, which was precisely what I worried it would be, a wholly competent soulless drone without an ounce of the charm of the original, I'm probably not playing these. Especially Max Payne - those two games have a really special place in my heart, historically speaking, one of my all-time favourites. I worry how it'll end up.
But that's just me.

I missed that boat, so I'm not worried about my nostalgia being ruined. I might get them for a compare and contrast, but considering the Payne games are being done by Remedy themselves I feel confident they'll be worth it. I believe CDPR is also doing the Witcher 1 remaster, so we'll see. I forget what remaster I played recently which while not bad, wasn't great.... but I can't think of it at the moment.
 
Ultimate Chicken Horse on the Nintendo Switch. If you haven't played this, it's one of my favourite multiplayer games ever.
 
Ultimate Chicken Horse on the Nintendo Switch. If you haven't played this, it's one of my favourite multiplayer games ever.
The hardest thing as an "old" gamer is playing multiplayer games. It was so easy as a teen to have friends over or go to a friends house and play couch co-op. Now, thanks to online play it's supposed to be easier except all my friends are my age with jobs, families and responsibilities. I'm lucky if we play twice a year. Also, we all must have the same game and it isn't always the case. Quite sad now that I think about it LOL.
 
The hardest thing as an "old" gamer is playing multiplayer games. It was so easy as a teen to have friends over or go to a friends house and play couch co-op. Now, thanks to online play it's supposed to be easier except all my friends are my age with jobs, families and responsibilities. I'm lucky if we play twice a year. Also, we all must have the same game and it isn't always the case. Quite sad now that I think about it LOL.

Yeah, I never play online. Only same screen. Switch is great for that, lots of games that support it.
 
After spending 130 hours on it I finally got the platinum trophy for FFVII Rebirth. I'll keep this spoiler free and focus more on my impressions.

There is a lot to love about this game. I was really happy with the story. The characters are a delight and it's always fun seeing them interact in various little ways. The artstyle looks great and there are so many little details to appreciate everywhere. As I've mentioned before, the soundtrack is phenomenal and massive. The combat is an evolution of Remake's and it works well (mostly). Some of the minigames, particularly the new card game Queen's Blood, are super fun.

That said, the lows of the game are abyssmal. Rarely has my opinion on a game soured so much the longer I played it. Some of my issues are obviously related to my playstyle due to being a completionist, others were apparent from the get go. The overworld is split up into multiple open world zones. Those started out quite fun but quickly became rather boring. Not only that, some of them were a chore to explore. Ubisoft-style towers weren't a good fit for this game. Another issue was the obnoxiously massive amount of minigames. Almost every single part of the game that would drive the story forward had some kind of mandatory minigame attached to it. Some were fun, but many were either super generic, a waste of time, or horribly unbalanced. In order to get the platinum trophy you have to nail every single minigame (except the piano one, there you "only" need to get A ranks instead of S ranks). Some of them were laughably easy, others though infuriatingly hard.

In general, getting the platinum trophy for this one was very challenging and it's easily one of the harder platinum trophies out there. None of the Souls games I played came even close to the challenge found here. Unfortunately it's not even that rewarding at points because it felt so freaking unfair. Like I said, many minigames expect perfection, so look forward to restarting a bunch and wasting a ton of time (more on that later). Unfortunately the other big factor of frustration as far as difficulty goes is the end-game combat. Hard mode was mostly a breeze, with a few hick-ups here and there, but the combat simulator challenges (just like in Remake) were horrible. There is an excessive amount of them and you'll keep fighting the same enemies over and over again, with barely anything changing, so it often feels like padding for no reason. The real problem becomes apparent in the most difficult fights, which were pretty overtuned. People have found a few cheese strats that make these easier, but you still need to play very well, otherwise you'll wipe in the last round and will need to spend another 30 to 45 minutes just to get to where you lost.

With that we get to the next major point of frustration, the game's utter disregard for the player's time. As previously mentioned you'll find yourself restarting the minigames over and over again due to a single mistake here and there, or having to replay them entirely because you didn't meet the required point threshold to either continue with the story/side quest or for the trophies. There are certain animations while exploring the overworld which you'll see quite often and which considerably slow down the game for a few seconds killing the pacing entirely. This game features a climbing system, which is also excruciatingly slow; instead of being able to continuously climb you hop from point to point and that drags. There are multiple instances (prominently featured in the demo of the first chapter for example) where you have to press and hold either L2 or R2 for a slow animation (like crawling around the floor) to play. There's a ton of forced slow walking moments. Every single story boss has multiple phases (no issue there) but also phase transitions in the form of unskippable cutscenes (oof). Especially some of the harder bosses towards the end are obnoxious on hard mode since they waste so much of your time.

To summarize, I find it quite amusing how my experience echoes the apparent consensus with some key differences though. There are folks out there who dislike or were disappointed by the story (it's a Final Fantasy game after all), but loved the minigames and open world segments. For me it was the exact opposite. I had good times with the game but also a lot of frustrating moments and I'm glad that I can finally move on to play something different. Unfortunately it doesn't come close to Remake, let alone XVI or XIV. I bought a few indie games on the Switch that were on sale the other day. Looking forward to something different and new.
 
Started playing Dragon’s Dogma II, spent most of my first session trying to make my pawn look like Mandrake Project Bruce Dickinson, with some degree of success…LOL.
 
Looks like I haven't posted about this before which is odd, but here it goes. I've been grinding away at Vampire Survivors. A great, cheap game with characters inspired by Castlevania, Byonetta and other franchises. The goal is simple, you start with one character and work your way through timed levels and all you have to do is survive. More and more enemies show up every 5 minutes until minute 30. You have a starting active weapon and can unlock others as well as passive buffs. You find the right combination of active and passive and you can evolve your weapon into something more powerful.

Very simple, very addictive gameplay. Also great for destressing and playing in small 30 minute intervals. As you progress you unlock more weapons, characters and levels. The base game was entertaining enough, but since release they've released 4 DLCs, two were extra levels in the base game, one is an "Adventures" pack with a whole new set of levels, weapons and characters (which you can unlock in the base game as well) and a Among Us rip-off. They've also added a co-op option which has been great. My brother and I would play taking turns, now we can play together and it is a lot of fun. Highly recommend it, the trailer is pretty funny, the friends I send it to end up quoting the same line LOL:

LOL, fun stuff, the variety of play modes, characters, achievements, etc. Makes the replayability insane. I have noticed something. I play it on my xbox and on my xbox app on my PC. For whatever reason they are NOT the same game. On my xbox I have all the DLCs, and characters, on the PC version through the xbox app I only have the base game. However everything is available on the Steam version. It's only like 3 bucks for the base game and like a dollar per DLC, VERY well worth it.
 
Well, shit, now Dragon's Dogma II made me make a pawn for my arisen pawn, so of course I had to try to approximate Adrian Smith. Here's the dynamic duo:

bruce-adrian-dd2.jpg
 
So, after four playthroughs of Lies of P - the first game I've ever Platinum'd - I've decided not to wait until I finish the books (I still have, like, 40 % of the seventh book before me, Sapkowski is absolutely killing me, I definitely hate it by now) and started Witcher 1 over weekend.

I've done the prologue and the first two chapters.

Like, first impession was - wow, this game is janky as fuck. Indeed, since the first Gothic I don't recall another game that would have as its hardest obstacle not putting it down in the first 30 minutes.

BUT, the game has its charm and I must say I'm quite addicted after all. CD Projekt Red still has problems with pacing (the entire second half of the second chapter, with discovering the 10 sephiroth and unlocking the tower for ... nothing felt really bloated, but overall it has the charm I saw in Witcher 3.
I’ve Beaten W1 roughly 17-18 times since it came out in 2007. Love that game to pieces.
 
Hello everybody.
I'm Spambot and I'm an addict.
I'm addicted to eFootball (formerly known as PES - Pro Evolution Soccer).
So far, due to my addiction, I've abandoned those that were close to me.

I've left GTA 5, because, apparently, we reached our end (yes, we did have 100% but there was so much more to discover)

I've left Doom (2016) because, I never played FPS on a console and instead of reigning chaos through the place, I played it like Metal Gear Solid.

I've also left Arkham Knight (2015). Not that it was a bad date (although I did complain about the rain), it's just.... I never called him again. I tried to find reasons why, but I very well knew why. There was a new fix of eFootball waiting for me after.

Only two months in, I'm already on the third season of addiction. It wasn't a good drug at the beginning, they changed everything I knew and loved about it (primarily Master League). But then came a new patch, and I went down the rabbit hole.

I'm hoping to get better. I already called my friend God of War (2018) because if anybody can get me out of this hellhole - it's Kratos.
 
Playing Hot Wheels Unleashed (2021) on the Nintendo Switch.

Having a lot of fun with this one! A brilliant little arcade racing game. Love the tracks, and the game is just challenging enough.
 
Decided to go back to Call of Duty 3. Really liking it. I know they couldn't do it forever, but I much more like grounded feel of WWII, the bickering between allies and the serious tone to the more recent CoDs. Don't know how much of the game I have left as I do about a checkpoint a night, but I'm close to finishing it.

Picked up Bendy 1 and 2 80% of each as well as Deliver Us Mars. I had already got it for free through Epic, really liked it, but decided to support the devs by buying it, even if it was on discount, and I thought my brother and I could go through both Deliver us the Moon/Mars together as he likes Sci-fi, but dislikes "modern" games for being "too complex" Well... it doesn't get any simpler than walking sims, figured it was a good way of easying him in as my Boderlands experiment failed miserably.
 
I'm playing Horozon Less Than One Sunrise for PC, after it's been on PS4 forever. I like it. I shoot dinosaurs with a bow and arrow and take their parts. It's like if Monster Hunter and Witcher 3 had a baby starring You Know Nothing Jon Snow from Game of Thrones. Very enjoyable. Looking forward to the sequel: Horozon Don't Go Left.
 
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Sales keep tempting me, but my backlog is just way too deep to indulge myself right now. I’m always tempted by on-sale indies like Pentiment, Jusant, Chants Of Sennar, that sort of thing, but what’s the point if I don’t get around to actually playing them?

I need to pound out Dragon’s Dogma II before I consider anything else, I think. Though I did spend the $10 to pick up the Vader Immortal series for PSVR1, since that cost less than a fast food lunch, and VR light sabering would have to be pretty cool, right?
 
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