Now Playing (Video Games)

Jer said:
When I get around to it, should I play 0 first, or would it be a better experience if I played 1 first, then 0?
Click to expand...
Definitely play 1 first. Playing 0 before it might spoil a few things.

I've been in an explorative mood lately so I decided to begin a replay of the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy. I forgot how much I liked these games. Just finished the first one, and aside from an overabundance of quick-time events (sadly these were popular at the time), it holds up well. The second one was my favorite.
 
I had to go and play something that would distract me from reading Brando Sando all the time and I was already having from software withdrawal symptomes, so although I wanted to wait until the DLC was going to be out, I couldn't resist and started Elden Ring again.
And for all the people saying that it's the "first time experience-only" game, I must say I'm having even more fun than the first time. I'm also more well-versed in the lore and stuff like that, I'm looking for sidequests and so on... and well, I feel like it's my game. It probably surpassed even RDR2 as the "must-play-go-to-open-world-AAA-game-of-the-past-X-years". RDR is probably better, objectively, as for the story and characters and everything, but there's just something really special about this one. I thought nothing would surpass DS 1, because it was the first fromsoft experience and the level design and everything was so awe-inspiring, but ER has.
 
Just finished up my replay of The Last Of Us, for the first time since it originally came out on the PS3. I played the remastered version this time, and the bump to 60fps was much appreciated. The UI and AI feel a bit quirky by today’s standards, but it’s still a damn good game and the story still hits like a sledgehammer. Next I’ll move on to the “Left Behind” DLC and The Last Of Us Part II, both of which I’ll be playing for the first time.

I finally finished all 240 levels on Jackal Squad on mobile, played PVP until its shortcomings became too frustrating, and ran up against another gear gate that finally bounced me off of playing the game anymore. Had a good time with it while it lasted.

I started playing Squad Alpha on mobile, which is pretty fun, though you see most of what it has to offer within a few days. It ultimately boils down to a bite-sized procedurally generated top-down looter shooter, and there are certain weapons that are clearly superior to others (e.g. sniper rifles with 6-ammo capacity), but it’s fun to keep playing here and there.

I also started playing Booster Up! on mobile, which is one of those very simple “make your rocket better so you can reach more distant planets and moons to generate more income to make your rocket better” loops. The funny thing with that one is that there’s a cap on the level of rocket components you can buy or merge that can only be raised by reaching new planets, but there’s a floor on the level of components you can buy which you can raise with earnable currency. The way I invested my currency, I actually got the floor to exceed the cap (so I could buy lv 30 components, but wasn’t supposed to be able to buy or merge stuff above lv 25), and this got the game into a very weird state where I couldn’t get rid of any components above the cap, but anything over the cap would magically disappear when I quit the game. So I just kept going, since it was easy to reach new planets with the better gear, but once I hit the lv 35 maximum on components they started behaving like lv 1 components and things got very weird, including end-of-mission screens freezing and such.

I kept fiddling with the game to see if I could still progress enough to get the cap to catch up to the floor, but then they put out an update that raised the maximum component cap much higher, prevented you from raising the floor above the merge cap, and fixed the other wonkiness, so I was able to start progressing again. The game’s a little mindless, though, so I’ll probably put it down soon.

Still need to spend some time with No Man’s Sky in VR now that I have a functional PSVR2 again. And at some point I’ll probably bite the bullet and pay the $10 blackmail fee to upgrade The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners to the PSVR2 version so I can finish playing through that in style.

EDIT: Well, “Left Behind” was super short, and the story was pretty much exactly as depicted in the TV show, minus the present-day gameplay sequences. Well done, though. On to Part II…
 
Last edited:
Finally finished up The Last Of Us Part II after about 35 hours, which was way longer than I was expecting. Playing on the PS5 gave me a nice, rock solid 60fps on a game that was already very pretty by PS4 standards. The game definitely had some top-level pacing issues, though the moment-to-moment narrative worked well and kept me engaged. The gameplay enhancements were limited but welcome, and the new weapons and infected were interesting.

Hard to talk about the game without hardcore spoilers, so…
The game’s narrative was apparently pretty polarizing, as the event that sets everything in motion is the brutal beating death of Joel Miller, the main protagonist of the first game. Ellie sets off on a mission of revenge, and as things build up over the next 20 hours or so to what appears to be the climax of the story, suddenly the game rewinds 3 days and you play through a similarly long campaign as Abby, the person who killed Joel, until you return to the same point in the story. You then have a weird face-off where you play mostly as one character but have a moment as the other, and then there’s an extended final act that ends with a hand-to-hand showdown between Ellie and Abby.

The character swap in the middle of the game was surprising and pretty cool (even though you briefly played as Abby early in the game, which suggested something like that might be coming), though it did deflate all of the build-up from the first 20 hours of the game. Since the first game was only about 15 hours long, the midpoint climax really did seem like it was going to be the actual climax of the game, so starting an entire additional campaign with limited weapons and abilities felt like a bit of a letdown at first, though it did earn its runtime in the end.

The narrative was also pretty dark, digging into grief, revenge, blood feuds, the cycle of violence, and ultimately forgiveness. It really underlined the notion that everyone is the hero of their own story, that everyone is someone’s child, parent, friend, and/or lover, and that every casual kill has devastating consequences for others. I can see why some people found it distasteful and unsatisfying, but I thought it was interesting.

It’s too bad the multiplayer mode was cut from the game, because there were a lot of cool factions and environments that would have been interesting to play around with. It sounds like that mode is getting spun off into its own thing, but it’ll probably be an annoying live service deal once it finally surfaces.

I started playing Cursed To Golf, which is a 2D golf roguelite presented in SNES style. Still in the early going, but the crazy procedurally generated holes combined with deck building for special ability cards, and occasional boss battles, make for an interesting mash-up of mechanics.

I played Booster Up! on mobile up to the new level cap of 100, which then rebroke the game even worse than before, so I’m done with it.

Picked up some more PSVR2 titles on deep discount, including Moss I & II and the $10 blackmail fee to upgrade The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners to PSVR2. I’ll probably focus on one of those next.
 
Jer said:
Hard to talk about the game without hardcore spoilers, so…
Click to expand...

Two thoughts - if the second game is going to get adapted, I don't think it will be adapted as is, but we'll see about that.
Also, the general idea you found interesting, I did too, so did many other people. I didn't play it, because I'm not of the PS crowd, but friends of mine who have argued with me that the premise I found intriguing might have been fine, but the result wasn't and apparently that it was the execution that was to blame.

Anyway, he's not perfect, but I trust NeverKnowsBest for what it's worth, to me he's probably the all-around most insightful and wholesome game YouTuber (not as nitpickingly technical as Anderson nor only interested in the narrative and literary aspects like HelloFutureMe, more substantial than Luke Stephens etc...) - and he also seemed to genuinely want to like the game, but his comments were more or less agreeing with with what other people I trust were saying, so while I might one of these days play 1 (though it's obviously not a game for me in many ways), I don't think I'll ever play the second installment.

 
Last edited:
JudasMyGuide said:
Two thoughts - if the second game is going to get adapted, I don't think it will be adapted as is, but we'll see about that.
Click to expand...
They would definitely have to restructure the narrative to work better for the TV show. And since I've read that they plan to adapt Part II into two separate seasons of the TV show, they would also need to have a satisfying conclusion to the second season, which seems like it would be very hard to do effectively.
The game itself felt like they probably initially set it up to ping pong back and forth between Ellie and Abby more often (like playing through each day as one, then the other), but ultimately decided to have you play through as Ellie first, then Abby, because that would have more narrative impact.

If you take Ellie's journey all the way to what seems like the end, with each of her killings of Abby's friends seeming justified in their own way, and Abby being this obviously awful person who needs to pay for what she's done, then flipping the script and seeing things from Abby's perspective is more jarring and effective, and by the time you're going up against Tommy and Ellie from Abby's point of view, they're the ones who seem like monsters, which is part of they point the storytellers were trying to make.

If you tried to approach the TV show in that way, you'd have an entire season leading up to a cliffhanger, then the final season of the show would focus almost exclusively on Abby, which most viewers would probably hate. But if you show Ellie's and Abby's stories contemporaneously, you lose some impact from humanizing Abby too soon, and I don't have any idea what you'd end season 2 on, other than a really weak cliffhanger with the storm coming in and Ellie heading out for the aquarium while Abby heads out for the Seraphite island.
Thanks for the video, I'll check it out.
 
So, I agree with a lot of the points that the video reviewer made, but I don't agree that the story was anywhere near as manipulative or hackneyed as he claims it to be. What he describes as beating you over the head with "you need to feel this way now", especially related to the dogs and some of the endgame content, seemed like an incredibly cynical take to me. From my end it didn't feel forced in that way.

Now, there were some structural and pacing problems for sure, and I can understand people being upset by some of the characters' choices and some of the plot points. And I agree that there were some missed opportunities to use the second half of the game to hold a mirror up to the first half rather than going off on a bit of a tangent.

His critique of scavenging and resources in general wasn't wrong, especially regarding absurdly low ammo caps for certain weapons; though I do think he missed a couple of angles on resource plentifulness. This is a large city that's had parts abandoned and other parts changing hands for a long time, so it makes sense that there would be some pockets of stuff lying around, though I agree that the long-abandoned parts should probably have been picked pretty clean by now. But the more plentiful resources also mean that obsessive scavenging isn't required for people who dislike that aspect of the game, so that could be seen as a quality of life improvement for the player. On the flip side, obsessive scavengers now wind up spending a lot more time doing the scavenging and getting lots of "full" prompts, as the reviewer noted -- and if you don't obsessively scavenge, it would be possible to completely miss some weapon holsters and new weapon types, so maybe it's a net negative unless you're a speed runner.

I would probably rate the game an 8 or 9 out of 10. On the technical merits it's a pretty easy 10/10, but the pacing and a few quirky aspects of the story and gameplay drag it down a bit, though I wouldn't say as much as this guy claims. I do think it's definitely worth playing if you played and enjoyed the first game, but be prepared to have your patience and your expectations challenged a bit.
 
Thanks for watching it and for your opinion. To me it kinda feels the developers forgot one essential thing - you can have post-modern toying with narrative and characters or you can have immersion and emotional investment. Usually you don't manage both (there are exceptions, but they are rather rare). From what I gather, TLOU 1 was mostly about the latter. The second installment wanted to be about the former.

The "heavy-handedness" of the narrative and the moralising is a complaint I see repeated from other people who played it, but I agree it might depend on your own attitude and approach.

I am not surprised - to me,
Joel ended 1 as a villain, in a way
- and I personaly think his actions maybe weren't meant to be lauded (though it's hard to say, I had an insanely long argument about morality regarding the second Witcher 3 DLC - Blood and Wine - where the person at hand wasn't able to understand that I'm coming at it from deontologic, not utilitarianistic viewpoint), but many people didn't seem to get it, so I understand they decided to be more overt in the sequel.

(It reminds me of the Godfather films - many people didn't understand the subtle ending of 1 meaning Michael is one of the bad guys now, so 2 was made almost ridiculously dark and heavy to get the point across... but I digress).


However, I feel like even with the story as it was, it could have been done better and make people more invested and be less didactic.

For example, starting as Abby, with the inciting element being losing her father - but not telling the player how, with following her on her revenge quest and having the twist of discovering that the object of your revenge is Joel. Paralleled with (time skipped) Ellie who is trying to find Joel's killer - whom she doesn't know. Intertwining these two narratively. That might have worked better.

Though I agree with NKB that it's hard to preach to your audience when you don't give it the choice - you are playing a game that does not allow you to not go on a revenge spree - so this attempt at moralising might even then feel wrong.
The first Bioshock got away with it, because it had a different structure and because it actually thematised the ludonarrative dissonance it presented - as well as the actions of your character being at least somewhat plausibly the best choice you as a player could have done.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jer
Tried out No Man's Sky on PSVR2, and after spending at least 5 minutes thinking the forward and backward movement was completely broken, I fiddled with the control options and saw that it defaulted to forward and backward moving relative to the way the controller was pointing, not the way your body was pointing. Since I usually leave my hands down at my sides when I'm not directly interacting with something, this made the forward and backward motion glacially slow and unpredictable. After switching control to "body relative" everything started working as expected.

The VR UI is a little janky, as the text is a bit too small in places, and things quiver a bit in the menus, and overlays are projected in front of you, so sometimes they're obscured by objects or do other weird things. But the detail for nearby items is great, and the pop-in isn't too bad. I didn't quite get my ship repaired yet, so I can't speak to the flight controls, but I'll probably spend enough time to at least get to that point with the game before I stop.

If I hadn't already dumped too many hours into the vanilla version of the game back in 2016 I'd be more inclined to dive in deeper with it, but the core business of the game seems about the same, just with nicer dressing and a lot more extra stuff dumped on top of it. Curious if flight will feel pukey or not once I get the thing off the ground.
 
Got the ship flying, and while it’s not totally comfortable, it’s not exactly pukey either. They wisely moved the roll controls to the thumb stick and made the main control stick just do pitch and yaw, which is unlike an aeroplane but less likely to make you do something nausea-inducing (e.g. roll in Ace Combat 7 VR made me turn green pretty quickly).

Planet resolution from orbit is still pretty low, and pop-in on the surface is sometimes kinda bad, but sometimes fine. It’s a pretty good effort, but like I said before, I don’t think I’m going to sink any more time into it because I’ve been there and done that in the vanilla game.
 
Jer said:
Got the ship flying, and while it’s not totally comfortable, it’s not exactly pukey either. They wisely moved the roll controls to the thumb stick and made the main control stick just do pitch and yaw, which is unlike an aeroplane but less likely to make you do something nausea-inducing (e.g. roll in Ace Combat 7 VR made me turn green pretty quickly).

Planet resolution from orbit is still pretty low, and pop-in on the surface is sometimes kinda bad, but sometimes fine. It’s a pretty good effort, but like I said before, I don’t think I’m going to sink any more time into it because I’ve been there and done that in the vanilla game.
Click to expand...
Tears Of The Kingdom is waiting on my doorstep. I haven't played the expansions to Breath Of The Wild though, so might play those first.
 
Finished Diablo 4 and Diablo 4 season 1. Not very happy with these games. Now it's time for Disco Elysium and Project: Warlock. Also - The Quarry in on discount so maybe I will buy it finally.
 
Meliegree said:
Also - The Quarry in on discount so maybe I will buy it finally.
Click to expand...
I’ve also been tempted to get this, as I enjoyed Until Dawn, but I can’t shake the feeling that this will eventually be a free PS+ Essential title, so I may just wait a bit longer to see if I get it for free.
 
Meliegree said:
Finished Diablo 4 and Diablo 4 season 1. Not very happy with these games. Now it's time for Disco Elysium and Project: Warlock. Also - The Quarry in on discount so maybe I will buy it finally.
Click to expand...
The first Diablo game I played was Diablo 3 almost three years ago. It was a deep, yet a simple game that kept me hooked. It offered profound moments in when a specific item for a set piece, or a set piece would drop. It had a plethora of YES! moments scattered through it because of that, and the Greater Rift rank climbs.

Unfortunately, the only YES! momens in Diablo 4 have only been when I advanced to the next World Tier. It suffers for many of the things that made me stop playing Destiny 2 altogether. Just doing stuff for the sake of it without any profound transformative moments.
 
Beat Cursed To Golf for the first time on my sixth attempt, though I did it by the skin of my teeth. Fun game that does a good job of riding just on the edge of frustrating you enough to make you want to quit, but making you still want to try just one more time. Just that final round of 18 holes took a little over 6 hours, so I’m guessing it took me about 10 hours to beat the game for the first time.

I managed to beat the two later boss holes on my final attempt, but I’d gotten some pretty great cards on that run, so I was able to portal through the ground a couple of times to get way ahead, and I figured out that the ice card lets your ball freeze water hazards and turn them solid temporarily, which helped in a couple of clutch situations. The 17th hole almost ended me, and I was baffled when my par-increasing cards disappeared without notice for the 18th hole, but thankfully that one wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the 17th was.

The game makes it clear that you can keep playing after you beat it, and I’ll probably give it a shot to see what changes, if anything. (I wonder if the bosses will respawn?) Beating the third boss hole lets you carry any unused cards over into your next playthrough, so it should be possible to build up a pretty amazing deck. It also looks like beating the game nets you an extra $15K that I assume can be spent in the store on the next playthrough, though I don’t know if it carries over upon failure.

Probably going to start God Of War: Ragnarok next, and I’m still deciding between playing Moss I & II or Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners for my next PSVR2 games.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top