Now Playing (Video Games)

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.
 
Abas said:
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.
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Major thing about Diablo IV that I don't like is that there's no sense of power for me. I love good challenge but I also need moments where I can wipe whole floors of demons to feel that hours that I put into my character has paid off. Not once I had this feeling in D4.
 
I've been playing a lot of stuff lately. Been working through my back catalog and replaying a few favorites.

I decided to knock off every achievement in both FO3 and New Vegas, I'm only missing the hardcore run in New Vegas.
Playing old school COD, I finished COD 2 and currently about half way through COD 3. It's amazing the jump these games made. You can see these earlier games were very much about educating the player on the horrors of war and how messy WWII was.

I'm also making my way through the Remedy-verse. Played Alan Wake a while back, but also played Quantum Break, which I feel is underappreciated, and Control. Control was great for the most part. Getting interrupted by Bureau alerts was annoying, but being a paranatural Jedi was a lot of fun. I can't play Alan Wake 2, because my PC is too old and it's only for series s/x. That will have to wait.

Played Uncharted: Lara's adventure in space, er, I mean, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order. A lot of tried and true game mechanics here, going all the way back to Prince of Persia's wall running. But yeah Pop wall runs, souls like combat, uncharted/tomb raider platforming, etc. And somehow it still manages to be Star Wars. I liked it. I liked how short it was, I liked the story, better than anything Disney SW, and it was fun.

My current obsession is FrostPunk. A post apocalyptic winter sim city, basically. you have to gather and manage resources, primarily heat, but also your citizens demands, ignore them for too long or the situation gets too dire and they'll banish you.

I was going to get Diablo IV, until I realized it's basically an always connected MMO, yet another disappointment from Blizzard, don't know why I let my hopes get too high. I'll stick to Diablo I from GOG.
 
Decided to play through Moss I & II as my next PSVR2 games. The remaster of the original Moss has the same simple level geometry and a handful of lower-res background textures, but the overall clarity upgrade going from PSVR1 to PSVR2 is pretty spectacular. You can shove your face right into the book art without any pixelization, and the same with the foliage in the environment. They even used the head rumble well (i.e. sparingly and tastefully).

Originally I wasn’t sure if I should bother getting the I & II bundle instead of just Book II, but now I’m glad I did, as the remaster was well worth the extra $6.

Cursed To Golf didn’t appear to carry my $15K over into my next round, and at first it looked like my cards didn’t roll over either, but now it looks like the cards did show up after I got to the second hole. There are a couple of other play modes I haven’t tried yet, including a 9-hole remix mode that claims it’s extra hard, and a practice mode that lets you tweak a bunch of settings. I’ll probably just try the remix mode after I finish my current round and that may be it for this game, at least for now.
 
Grinding some Street Fighter 6 this past month! Any fighting games fans here?
I bought a leverless arcade stick specifically for this game after I found out about them and decided I don't like using a lever.
I'm maining Honda.
 
Meliegree said:
Major thing about Diablo IV that I don't like is that there's no sense of power for me. I love good challenge but I also need moments where I can wipe whole floors of demons to feel that hours that I put into my character has paid off. Not once I had this feeling in D4.
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Nightmare Dungeons have scratched that particular itch for me a little bit
 
Mega said:
Grinding some Street Fighter 6 this past month! Any fighting games fans here?
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I'm mostly a depressed Virtua Fighter guy hoping that someday VF6 will happen. I did get into Street Fighter IV for a while when it was brand new, though, as well as the original Injustice when it was a free PS+ game. And the Marvel vs. Capcom series to varying degrees.

I still think Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution's fighting system was the absolute best of the quasi-realistic systems out there. The way it handled evades and throw counters, allowing you to work them into the beginning of compatible special move sequences, was pretty brilliant. While I've enjoyed the VF5 games, I do think they lost a little something compared to where the VF4 games left things. But it's nice to have Taka-Arashi back.
 
Jer said:
I'm mostly a depressed Virtua Fighter guy hoping that someday VF6 will happen. I did get into Street Fighter IV for a while when it was brand new, though, as well as the original Injustice when it was a free PS+ game. And the Marvel vs. Capcom series to varying degrees.

I still think Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution's fighting system was the absolute best of the quasi-realistic systems out there. The way it handled evades and throw counters, allowing you to work them into the beginning of compatible special move sequences, was pretty brilliant. While I've enjoyed the VF5 games, I do think they lost a little something compared to where the VF4 games left things. But it's nice to have Taka-Arashi back.
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I can't help but wonder what your takes are on Mortal Kombat and Tekken
 
Abas said:
I can't help but wonder what your takes are on Mortal Kombat and Tekken
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I haven't played a Mortal Kombat game since Mortal Kombat 3, probably. I did play the hell out of the Sega Genesis version of the original game, but that one really just boiled down to jump kicks and well-timed uppercuts, plus a few special moves worth remembering (Kano's eye beam, Scorpion's "Get Over Here" and backward teleport, etc.). Fatalities were just for show, of course. I was never really enamored of the fighting system or the button layout of that game.

Can't really speak to the modern Mortal Kombats, though if Injustice is similar to them, I found that game to be a bit stilted in its movement, but otherwise pretty solid. The story mode was really well done in that one, which was a surprise. (I never got around to trying Injustice 2, even though it was also released as a free PS+ game.)

I never spent any quality time with Tekken, really, though I played one of the earlier ones for a little while, maybe Tekken 3. What stood out to me with that game was the lack of character balance and the cheap, exploitable moves that some characters had. Maybe they've fixed that with subsequent entries, maybe not. But one of the things I always appreciated about Virtua Fighter and Street Fighter (at least II and IV) was that the characters were pretty well balanced in general.
 
Jer said:
I'm mostly a depressed Virtua Fighter guy hoping that someday VF6 will happen. I did get into Street Fighter IV for a while when it was brand new, though, as well as the original Injustice when it was a free PS+ game. And the Marvel vs. Capcom series to varying degrees.

I still think Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution's fighting system was the absolute best of the quasi-realistic systems out there. The way it handled evades and throw counters, allowing you to work them into the beginning of compatible special move sequences, was pretty brilliant. While I've enjoyed the VF5 games, I do think they lost a little something compared to where the VF4 games left things. But it's nice to have Taka-Arashi back.
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Never played any VF other than the first one.
SF6 gets a lot of praise though: partly because of hype, but also because it's really good. If you want to get back into the fighting games, it's worth a shot IMO.
 
Mega said:
Grinding some Street Fighter 6 this past month! Any fighting games fans here?
I bought a leverless arcade stick specifically for this game after I found out about them and decided I don't like using a lever.
I'm maining Honda.
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I was AMAZING at Street Fighter II championship edition on my Sega Genesis when I was 12 lol. That's the last time I was "good" or invested in fighting games. Played DOA 2 and 4 at a friends house, he eventually gifted me DOA 4 and I recently downloaded DOA 6 since it's free. I do have the 30th anniversary of SF on my wishlist. These are fun to play with friends, which is why I'm glad the TMNT cowabunga collection has the fighting games as well.

I've also been playing A LOT of metroidvanias, played through Blasphemous, but can't seem to get the "good" ending. Ghost Song was interesting. Currently playing a SEVERLY de-res souls like, Unworthy. And I mean DE-RES, not even 8-bit, this thing looks like the Oregon Trail from when I was a kid LOL.
 
KiDDo said:
Currently replaying Witcher 3 on Death March, and some Persona 5 Royal in between.
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Witcher 3 is my favorite all time game, and I'm also currently wrapping up a playthrough of P5R. I loved P3 and 4, and P5R is just as good. I'm also dabbling into the wider Shin Megami Tensei series across multiple platforms and recently finished SMT IV. Great game!
 
LOL, just started a 2nd playthrough of Witcher 3. Honestly, I started it just to play gwent, but got sucked into the amazing storytelling, even if it is to give an old woman her pan back.
 
Holy Hell, just finished the Bloody Baron quest and I made ONE different decision regarding the spirit under the tree and got the different ending from my first playthrough.... jesus, there's hardly any "good" endings in this game. Remember on my first playthrough, not knowing what to expect, I kept thinking, "How are they going to top this? I'm only 12 hours in or so. Well.... 100 and how ever many hours later I knew. At this point, loved every second of it, but I'm looking forward to The Man of Mirrors, Toussaint, The drunk werewolf, the gwent tourney, etc.... soooo much good stuff. The only thing I'm NOT looking forward to is Skelliege... that place is horrible. WAY to much random crap around the map. I usually like to do EVERYTHING on a map before moving forward, I'm not doing it again. Isn't worth it.
 
Onhell said:
LOL, just started a 2nd playthrough of Witcher 3. Honestly, I started it just to play gwent, but got sucked into the amazing storytelling, even if it is to give an old woman her pan back.
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Between the Blood Baron questline and hearing this when arriving to Skellige for the first time, The Witcher 3 is a bonafide 10/10 experience.
 
Abas said:
Mortal Kombat
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I have never been a fighting game fan, but Mortal Kombat is a huge part of my upbringing. I still remember when the original was released, and everyone thought it was the bee's knees. Sub-Zero and Scorpion were instant icons, as was Raiden. Then MK II came out and it changed the game. Reptile, Kitana, Kung Lao, Baraka... absolutely legendary game. It was around then that the movie was made, and while it's laughingly cheesy, it's one of those movies that I can watch over and over again without ever getting bored. "Those were $500 sunglasses, asshole!"

MK3 brought in some kool new kharacters like Cyrax, Kabal... I distinctly remember my brother @MrKnickerbocker jokingly dressing as Stryker one Halloween. But the fatalities and the overall quality wasn't as strong as MK II. After that the series dipped for a bit until Deception, then dipped again, then picked back up with the most recent trilogy (and hopefully the upcoming confusingly-titled MK1).

Going back to not being a fighting game fan, I've never played Mortal Kombat for the gameplay. I've heard from many fighting game enthusiasts that the series is actually quite shallow compared to other fighters. But I don't care. Mortal Kombat is all about the lore and the fatalities to me. Hell, Mortal Kombat is fatalities. I never saw the appeal of games like Street Fighter, where you beat your opponent only for them to... fall down? Lame. I did like the original Killer Instinct, but that was mostly for the characters.

I'd rank Mortal Kombat as an absolute classic game series, along with Resident Evil (another personal favorite of mine) and obviously some Nintendo stuff like Mario, Metroid, and Zelda.
 
Detective Beauregard said:
I have never been a fighting game fan, but Mortal Kombat is a huge part of my upbringing. I still remember when the original was released, and everyone thought it was the bee's knees. Sub-Zero and Scorpion were instant icons, as was Raiden. Then MK II came out and it changed the game. Reptile, Kitana, Kung Lao, Baraka... absolutely legendary game. It was around then that the movie was made, and while it's laughingly cheesy, it's one of those movies that I can watch over and over again without ever getting bored. "Those were $500 sunglasses, asshole!"

MK3 brought in some kool new kharacters like Cyrax, Kabal... I distinctly remember my brother @MrKnickerbocker jokingly dressing as Stryker one Halloween. But the fatalities and the overall quality wasn't as strong as MK II. After that the series dipped for a bit until Deception, then dipped again, then picked back up with the most recent trilogy (and hopefully the upcoming confusingly-titled MK1).

Going back to not being a fighting game fan, I've never played Mortal Kombat for the gameplay. I've heard from many fighting game enthusiasts that the series is actually quite shallow compared to other fighters. But I don't care. Mortal Kombat is all about the lore and the fatalities to me. Hell, Mortal Kombat is fatalities. I never saw the appeal of games like Street Fighter, where you beat your opponent only for them to... fall down? Lame. I did like the original Killer Instinct, but that was mostly for the characters.

I'd rank Mortal Kombat as an absolute classic game series, along with Resident Evil (another personal favorite of mine) and obviously some Nintendo stuff like Mario, Metroid, and Zelda.
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Toasty!
 
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