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I've been getting really into fighting games this past year, and it's all because of Guilty Gear. One day I heard this:


and I was hooked. It was strong heavy metal with all the drama of anime, and I wanted to hear more. That led me to the Guilty Gear Strive soundtrack, then to the characters, and finally to the games. I love how vibrant and colorful and full of personality everything is, and I've been having fun playing against my friends, trying to make our characters do crazy stuff while we both get better.
 
I have finished the AWE DLC and most sidequests of Control and I must say I'm really, really loving the game. It's, like, 9/10 at the very least and to me personally, it's Remedy supplying us with Max Payne for the 21st Century. The final fight of the DLC was a bit wack (some of the mechanics did suck a bit), but that didn't really take away from my enjoyment, the combat and the general gameplay loop are incredibly smooth and enjoyable, I like that it's becoming more horror-like (though it's the same as with AW 1 - I wish they did this atmosphere in the base game already and not only in the DLCs), I have a bit of a crush on Jesse (haven't heard voice acting this charismatic since Melissanthi Mahut's Kassandra in Odyssey and Roger Clark's Arthur Morgan in RDR2), there's an incredible amount of care thrown into the product and I still have an entire DLC to go - if anything, it might be almost a bit too long - in that too much of a good thing manner, because doing all the sidequests and reading all the documents and everything is a lot (but since I'm doing my trip through the Remedyverse, I don't dare skipping on any potential lore points).

Also, a friend of mine informed me yesterday that Blasphemous 2 is getting a DLC at the end of October! Time to do a replay of both installments in anticipation.
 
Anyone played Celeste? I got it in the summer and finally got around to playing it. I don't play platformers but I really like it, it feels very smooth. Great dialogue and phenomenal soundtrack!! I got most collectibles in the main game, I and did the first two extra levels. I'll see how close to 100%ing it I can get because I understand some of the challenges are back-breaking.

Oh, I also tried Peglin. It's a decent pachinko deck-building roguelite, funny idea, but very heavily imitates Slay the Spire while also feeling very clunky regarding QoL features. It doesn't seem deep enough either, which is a big problem for a game of this genre.
 
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Shmoolikipod said:
Anyone played Celeste? I got it in the summer and finally got around to playing it. I don't play platformers but I really like it, it feels very smooth. Great dialogue and phenomenal soundtrack!! I got most collectibles in the main game, I and did the first two extra levels. I'll see how close to 100%ing it I can get because I understand some of the challenges are back-breaking.

Oh, I also tried Peglin. It's a decent pachinko deck-building roguelite, funny idea, but very heavily imitates Slay the Spire while also feeling very clunky regarding QoL features. It doesn't seem deep enough either, which is a big problem for a game of this genre.
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Celeste is a great game. Unfortunately, I'm terrible at platformers so I stopped playing - I didn't want my terrible hand-eye coordination to overshadow the fact that it's a good game.
 
Shmoolikipod said:
Anyone played Celeste? I got it in the summer and finally got around to playing it. I don't play platformers but I really like it, it feels very smooth. Great dialogue and phenomenal soundtrack!! I got most collectibles in the main game, I and did the first two extra levels. I'll see how close to 100%ing it I can get because I understand some of the challenges are back-breaking.
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Yes! absolutely love it, my Xbox wallpaper is the achievement from the mountain top. I love that it is challenging but fair. Now I go back and try to get strawberries I missed, B-sides and the hearts to continue to the heart of the mountain
 
Sales are ruining me. Here’s my current backlog:

Stuff I’m theoretically playing:
Death Stranding
Dragon’s Dogma II
Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
Marvel’s Midnight Suns
Kenshi
Line War
Into The Breach
The Expanse
Shadows Of Doubt

Stuff literally in my backlog:
After The Fall
Red Matter
Red Matter 2
Talos Principle 2
Arcade Paradise
No More Heroes III
Demon’s Souls (PS5 remake)
Valkyria Chronicles 4
Disco Elysium
Frostpunk
The Callisto Protocol
Resident Evil 0
Resident Evil
Resident Evil 2 (PS5 remake)
Resident Evil 3 (PS5 remake)
Tyranny
Total War: Three Kingdoms
Steamworld Dig 2
Viewfinder

Stuff likely to enter my backlog soon:
Humanity
Pistol Whip
Synapse
Resident Evil 4 (PS5 remake)

First world problems and all, but this is really getting out of hand, and I’m specifically waiting for huge discounts before I take the plunge. FOMO, I guess…
 
Onhell said:
Yes! absolutely love it, my Xbox wallpaper is the achievement from the mountain top. I love that it is challenging but fair. Now I go back and try to get strawberries I missed, B-sides and the hearts to continue to the heart of the mountain
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Nice! Go for it, I've completed the B-sides and they had some very fun gameplay. I'll put the next bit in spoilers I guess, but it doesn't really spoil anything, just want to share my great mistake(=rant about it).
So after you finish the B-sides you unlock golden berries, which you pick up at the beginning of a chapter and only claim when you finish it. You need to complete the entire thing without dying. Ok, I thought, let's try 1A. Super easy, got it on the second try. Then I decided for some reason that if it was so easy, surely I can go for the B-side golden too right?

WRONG!

Oh my god, I suck. so. much. at this. Wednesday Thursday Friday all got to the point where my fingers were hurting and wet with sweat. And now Yom Kippur ended so I decided to try it a little more and I FINALLY DID IT. Almost lost my mind when I realized there's a final room I forgot about but luckily I kept my cool and beat it first try. Dude this was TORTURE! And this was one of the easiest levels. For comparison, on 2B, which was probably about the same difficulty as 1B, I have 106 deaths, and now on 1B I have 436, so it's something like 330 failed attempts at claiming the stupid golden berry. I have nearly 7 hours on the first chapter (A and B combined), with 800 total deaths, and on chapter 7 I have 1200 deaths yet only 4.5 hours, and it's like 3 or 4 times the amount of rooms too. I know 1B so well now I would say I can complete it blindfolded, if I wasn't evidently so bad at doing it with open eyes. How do some people have the patience to do this for the actually hard levels, I don't know.
 
On Friday I'm finally going to pull the trigger on getting a PS5. I've been an Xbox guy for three console generations, but there's too many amazing exclusives on PS that I just can't pass up. The Silent Hill 2 Remake is at the top of the list, but both The Last of Us games are up there, too.

Jer said:
Sure enough, this went back to a 50% discount for Halloween, so I picked it up. Eager to re-experience this in VR, since that was pretty revelatory for RE 7&8…
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While I think it's a better game than Village and a far better game than 7, I do question how the RE4R experience will translate to VR with all the melee combat and focus on action. It definitely has more horror and atmosphere than the original RE4, though.
 
Detective Beauregard said:
On Friday I'm finally going to pull the trigger on getting a PS5.
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I don’t think you’ll regret it, with the full PS4 and PS5 catalogs at your disposal.

I picked up a “like new” PS Portal during Amazon’s recent sale for ~$140, and it’s been a great upgrade for my Backbone One / cell phone setup. The screen is big and bright, and now I get very comfortable controller stocks with full haptics for my remote play sessions from the couch or bed. Still not suitable for games requiring ultra low latency, but it’s perfect for puzzle games and narrative games, and I’ve been playing Steamworld Dig 2 on it without issue, so it’s fine for mild action as well.

Detective Beauregard said:
I do question how the RE4R experience will translate to VR with all the melee combat and focus on action.
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Still in the very early going, but action isn’t a problem (this translated quite well for RE8), and it looks like they handled the melee thing by giving you a special one-hit-kill knife attack when you stun an enemy, so you do a quick throat slit and move on. I agree that a bunch of roundhouse kicks wouldn’t have fit VR very well!

EDIT: I was wrong, the roundhouse kicks are still in there, and when you do them it temporarily pops you out behind Leon and you watch him do the roundhouse kick before returning to first-person. Same with climbing ladders, being grabbed by enemies, etc. It’s a little weird, but you get used to it.

God damn it, now The Quarry is on sale for less than $10. Why do they keep doing this to me? LOL…
 
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The Quarry was quite good, I was afraid because of reviews but I had a great time (and a perfect ending) so I would play it again.

Just finished Vessel of Hatred. It was ok. New class is great and fun to play but I still feel that game is missing something. The multiplayer aspect of the game for me is a miss - it dilutes the experience.

There's promo on epic games so I bought Alan Wake 2 + delux edition upgrade for 50% less. Can't wait to play this :-)
 
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So my Halloween wish came true! We have a new Castlevania collection with the DS games! Order of Ecclesia, Portrait of Ruin and Dawn of Sorrow! And an Arcade Castlevania as a bonus. It was on sale so I got it. Been working through Order of Ecclesia and really liking so far. I know I should go back to the Advance games, (along with the rest of my backlog), but this was such a cool surprise I just had to put it at the front of the line.
 
I've made my way through most of Order of Ecclesia. I've rescued all the villagers and I've spent time doing as many side quests as possible before moving on. They don't feel as tedious as in other games, because it allows me to level up, get glyphs from enemies and experiment with the different equipment/weapon combos. I also like the separate level design. Makes it more manageable. The excessive backtracking in a massive castle in other titles could get overwhelming or just tedious. I've read some reviews complaining about it both in this title and in Portrait of Ruin, but I for one enjoy it. I also like the "Magic Ticket" item that lets you go back to town instantly without the need to reach the exit of a level. Makes getting items, glyphs and villagers a lot easier.

I think I'll play the others in this collection before making my way back to the Advance and NES/SNES games.
 
Onhell said:
The excessive backtracking in a massive castle in other titles could get overwhelming or just tedious. I've read some reviews complaining about it both in this title and in Portrait of Ruin, but I for one enjoy it.
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Portrait of Ruin is one of my absolute favourite games of all time, likely one of my Top Three. Can't count how many times I completed it. I also enjoyed the backtracking through the castle, any additional time spent playing this game is fine by me.

If you're aiming for 100% in that game, don't make the same mistake 12-year-old Edington did and do not sell the Long Sword, you need it for a quest but the game doesn't indicate that at all. It doesn't halt your progress if you do, but it bugged me so much that I had to start a new game.
 
I took a break from Order of Ecclesia. I was trying to complete all the side missions before continuing on to Dracula's Castle and got frustrated with the grinding for specific items.

For shits and giggles I decided to play Close to the Sun, a game in my backlog and on Game Pass. I LOVE this game. It's like they asked the question, What if Bioshock was a walking sim? The atmosphere is great, you can only run from danger, the story is interesting and each level gets increasingly larger in scope. I'm about halfway through. You're a reporter who gets a letter from your sister asking you to come to the Helios to help her out.

The Helios is a MASSIVE ship where all the top notch scientists gather to run their experiments (a la Rapture/Columbia). Our main antagonist is Tesla, who like Andrew Ryan talks to you over the ship's speakers and tries to quarantine you. Another person in your communicator is Aubry, some guy "stuck" somewhere on the ship (can't remember where), but somehow is able to help you unlocking doors, turning on lights and the like. Much like Atlas helps/guides you in Bioshock. You eventually hear from your sister and you do get to meet up with her eventually. Apparently, one of the experiments opened a tear in the space time continuum and some... things made their way into our timeline and have been wreaking havoc, they kinda look like the creatures from Prey (2017).

Even stranger, your sister tells you she didn't send that letter, but upon closer examination she says it was her future self that did! WHAAAA!? Pretty cool game. I have no idea why I'm such a sucker for walking sims, but this is one of the better ones I've played in a while. I was playing Those Who Remain, but lost interest after getting stuck in a library with an annoying environmental puzzle and a Mr. X/Nemesis like creature stalking me through the halls.

Also still working my way through Octopath Traveler 2. I really like the first one, but this one turns it up to 11. Doing some optional dungeons to level up as this one particular boss is giving me issues.
 
Finally finished up Steamworld Dig 2 for PS5, which was a steal for $2. Got a solid 15 hours out of the game, and I wasn’t being a completionist at all. Played the whole thing on the PS Portal, and aside from occasional transitory connection glitches it was almost seamless to play it that way.

Will probably finish up The Expanse next, then move on to Jusant as the active games in my “chill / puzzle” slot. Still maining RE4 Remake in my PSVR2 slot and theoretically Dragon’s Dogma II in my primary PS5 game slot, though I haven’t put much play time into those areas lately.

Haven’t put in much time on the Steam Deck recently, and I haven’t started any of the Mac games in my backlog either. Too many deep discount sales!
 
Finished Control - it was nice game with boring enemies but I like this type of stories and I'm big fan of SCP universe so it was nice. Now playing Alan Wake 2 and Assasins Creed Valhalla. - Alan Wake is something else, didn't expect that I will like it so much. Thank gods there is storyline mode and option to turn off some elements - I like to enjoy story more than fights in this kind of games.

Also finished Call of Duty Black Ops 6 campaign. It was ok - some elements didn't fit for me, some were great. Overall - I think that Modern Warfare (1 - 3) were better.
 
Half Life 2 - since it is 20th anniversary of release. I love this game series so it will be great to go back to this games (oh, and tomorrow Black Mesa Blue Shift mod will be released so it is also great).
 
Meliegree said:
Half Life 2 - since it is 20th anniversary of release. I love this game series so it will be great to go back to this games (oh, and tomorrow Black Mesa Blue Shift mod will be released so it is also great).
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It's currently free on Steam too, for those who don't own it yet.
 
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