Currently Playing in 2019....

Soulcalibur II HD Online

Playing weapon master mode thing & currently getting slapped into the middle of next week. Once the cpu gets hold of you with a little girlie pocket knife & then a killer combo, your ass is grass.

Parksey wrote:I have Darkest Dungeon on my PS4, but I'm always wondering if I should wait and get it on sale on the Switch for portability factor.

Is it a good port? I imagine it's a game well suited to handheld mode?

I played it on Vita and I found the UI a bit of a struggle, particularly some of the text descriptions. Not sure if the Switch improves on it with the higher res.

Still plugging away at AC Origins. Getting about an hour ir so in each evening.

Fired up Conan Exiles this evening after reinstalling it only to discover that my game save had vanished. Tried a few things to recover it, but looking online there seems to be a glitch that resets your game should you uninstall it. Naturally I was a bit pissed off, but perhaps I should have done a back up, which I now have. Starting again I'm less annoyed because I really do enjoy the game, plus having a good grasp of the mechanics I'm racing up through those starting levels. Level 15 and ready to venture further out and begin expanding my home, no doubt in the same area I was before as there is a good supply of resources.

Parksey wrote:It depends what you're playing Destiny for.

Forsaken is, arguably, the best Destiny has ever been. The new campaign is good (and has some implications for the plot and lore if you like that), the raid is meant to be one of the best, the grind is now spread out over a dozen or so different activities so you can pick where you do it, they rebalanced a lot of what was wrong with the vanilla game and stuff is still on-going in the endgame zone.

There's also Gambit, which is possibly the best mode in the game with a team.

Again though, it depends what you play Destiny for. If you're just doing the story missions, then that's probably only about 5% of the game for those who play it hardcore. The story missions are decent and replayable but it's not the same as a linear FPS campaign like Doom, Wolfenstein, Titanfall 2 etc.

I would advise you to give Forsaken a go if you were hooked on Destiny 1 in the past. It's at least as good as The Taken King, probably better. Plus you'd get Warmkdn and Osiris too so there's a decent chunk of content in there.

I got Forsaken at launch and, bar a week when I was abroad, I've played it most nights. I only got to max power level last week, and I still have six or seven exotic quests, one raid lair to finish, two to prestige, the Forsaken raid itself, gambit ranks, crucible ranks, god rolls to find, lore to seek out, all but one of the Forsaken exotics to find and triumphs to get. Then I'll probably work on my second character.


And this is from playing it an hour or so most nights too. There's a lot of meaningful stuff you can work towards now, if you let the game grab you. As was said, the gunplay and feel of your character are still the best out there.

My problem is lack of people to play with. I'm never going to see any of the game's Raids or endgame content simply because I don't know anyone else who plays it (on PC at least). The lore and story is utterly incomprehensible to me (had a quick look at the entry for The Taken on Destinypedia last night as the vanilla campaign does strawberry float all to explain them. Jesus Christ the background lore is utter bobbins, proper "King Angtar smote the Dread Gulflargler across the brow with Maficarum's Twisted Oratory and cast his down to the Luminescent Pits of Ark Ma'aaagoa" type stuff) so I'm not playing for that. Essentially I'm there for the gunplay, which I'm already getting a little bored of 2/3rds of the way through the campaign.

Thing is though, I've no doubt I'd get my money's worth from Forsaken. If I chose to spend the £35 the fact I'd spent money would mean that maybe I'd try and find a team on a LFG board, or that I'd enjoy the new activities. But nothing in the base game is getting me over that hump, especially when you consider there's likely more paid content in the works and that by buying Forsaken you're entering into a system of recurring payments rather than simply purchasing a game.

Yeah the lore is a little bit like that. I don't go that deeply into it and it's not really my sort of thing, but they've stuck little trinkets in to uncover, for those who are mad about it. There's also some foreshadowing for what's to come, and there are some cool ideas that flesh some things out. I've gotten to know some stuff purely by playing the games since 2014 and it's generally held to be a decent game unvierse that suffers from the same traits as a lot of "lore" - it could do with less breadth and more depth. Halo massively suffered from this too.

The problem is it the lore per se, but now it's presented. They should present it as an accessible core story with all the other stuff for those who want it, and not hide the lore behind text. It's impenetrable at times as you're getting it out of order and drip fed to you.

As for teammates, you probably won't find that many now. There's more.of an active playerbase over at rllmuk, or you could try an LFG on Reddit. That's where I met people to play with and you get a decent group of players that way. It'd be a shame to miss out on some of the endgame as that's where the best stuff is.

Edit - Bear in mind that when people were complaining about Destiny 2, it was the base game they were complaining about. So it probably won't get you over the hump by itself. They've improve stuff behind the scenes that will make it better, but it won't work miracles. Warmind started the upward trend that accelerated with Forsaken, which is arguably better than the previous franchise high point of The Taken King.

The reality is, you probably won't get over the hump unless you buy Forsaken. It'll double the size of the existing game and make it so much better. But what you're currently playing is what sort of left Destiny floundering for the best part of 9 months, so I doubt you'll see the light if you just keep sticking to that.

What part of the endgame do you find a chore now?

Grinding to a higher level is easier now, due to all activities dropping Powerful Gear on daily and weekly resets, as well as a vast area of bounties for every area. You don't have to follow a set path to level up anymore and can just play what you want. You also don't need to reach max level if you wish.

And there's still loads of unique stuff to do when you're at the endgame. It's no longer just about doing the raid over and over until you get bored.

Destiny and Destiny 2 are legitimately awful games. They play well but the lore and bizarre barriers to content via DLC or requiring player numbers is ridiculous.

Photek wrote:Destiny and Destiny 2 are legitimately awful games. They play well but the lore and bizarre barriers to content via DLC or requiring player numbers is ridiculous.

They aren't legitimately awful though are they? You just don't like them.

The lore is all optional stuff. Especially with Destiny 2, the main campaign is a simple story you can understand without much in the way of lore (likewise with Forsaken, which is a basic story of revenge). It's no better or worse than what happened to the Halo "story", like how Halo 4 required you to read a novel so you understood its main antagonist.

Currently the only barriers to content are owning the DLC itself, and not owning it bars you from the DLC (like every other piece of DLC in existence). You even get a booster to get your character up to the level needed if you want. They did originally block you from the Nightfall strike and Prestige raid (basically an added hard mode they usually drop a month or two down the line) with the first expansion last year, but that's changed now. That was the only time that had ever happened.

And again, if you play a raid, they are designed for six players with comms. Everything else bar the Nightfall can be solo'd and done in matchmaking. You could argue that they could stick matchmaking in the raid, but I don't know how you'd then get over people not speaking your language or not using their microphone. You need them to be a fully cooperative member of the team. And that's what makes them great.

And Bungie still do the best FPS gunplay going.

Brer, what sort of stuff are you doing to get to 520? If I remember rightly, everything basically drops higher to get you to 500. After that, you want to be doing things that reward powerful gear. Try looking up a levelling guide as I thought the "hump" was 540-550 rather than lower.

EDIT - Also, looking at your achievements, you only got one for Destiny 2 (the heroic pukc event) so it's fair enough if you didn't like it, but you didn't exactly play that much of it. Like reading: "It's a truth universally acknowledged..."* and saying it was an absolutely awful read. You didn't actually drain the original game either, though spent a little longer with it. As I previously said, Bungie made huge strides forwards with both The Taken King for D1 and with Forsaken with D2. I would argue that an accurate picture of the state of those games now can't be made without having played those.



*(Grcade: This is from "Pride and Prejudice"**)





**(Pride and Prejudice is a book***)






***(A book is like a movie but with words and it takes place entirely in your brain)

Didn't say the gunplay was bad but I have MCC to cater to gunplay needs and the online versus mp is infinitely better and still has a big community to boot, not to mention that Chief's lore is interesting. Lastly, since the 4K update it looks as good as Destiny 2, especially Halo 2 Anniversary.

Photek wrote:Didn't say the gunplay was bad but I have MCC to cater to gunplay needs and the online versus mp is infinitely better and still has a big community to boot, not to mention that Chief's lore is interesting. Lastly, since the 4K update it looks as good as Destiny 2, especially Halo 2 Anniversary.

The lore being interesting is completely subjective. I think Halo's lore is absolute bobbins. I'm not massively bothered about Destiny's either, but not liking it or not wanting to know about it isn't a barrier to entry. You don't need to know any outside stuff. You can play Destiny 2 without having touched the game before. Likewise with Forsaken, it's a simple story of revenge and whilst prior knowledge obviously fleshes it out, it's not required. Is Halo 5 the same, or is the backstory a barrier to entry? I don't know.

For me, I think of I played Halo MCC (I'll get it once I get round to getting an Xbox), I feel like the PVP would.more than hold my attention, and that the single player campaigns would be a good nostalgia hit, but I think I'd find the PVE side of it a little lacking now. I did like Firefight back in the day though.

For me, both Halo and Destiny lore suffer from the same sort of things.

I prefer Halo's PVP too, though it's not infinitely better in my eyes. Destiny's not as focused on the PVP part and if probably shows, but it does have peerless PVE content that no other console FPS does in the raids, which round it off as a package. If I only played PVP then, yeah, it wouldn't be enough probably. I'm more of a PVE and occasionally PVPer.

The new Gambit mode (PvEvP) is awesome too. A genuinely great mix of the two.

Destiny's community is still active too. On PS4 at least you see a lot of players in the social areas, the matchmaking always fills up, it's busy during events and there's a sizeable, dedicated online community. It's not an argument to be made against the game. Destiny 2 Tracker has 992k players who played the crucible yesterday, so that's pretty healthy.

I can understand if you prefer Halo though. If you were looking for Halo in Destiny you'd obviously find a lot of similarities (the feel, movement and gunplay is classic Bungie) but you're going to be ultimately disappointed in its approach. For me, I think the feel and gunplay of Destiny is unmatched by anything on consoles still. Just like it probably was when the first few Halo's came out. Haven't played Halo 5 yet, but Halo 4 just wasn't as good as those earlier games.

For Destiny PVP, it's about getting a great gun or some armour, sticking your perks on it and then taking it into the Crucible to kill people with. Again, it's not the same as Halo, so if you prefer that, you're going to find some things not to your taste or a little jarring. As I said before, the top-end PVE stuff though, is amazing and a unique FPS experience. It is, again, very different from, say, doing Halo on Legendary in co-op. Both are great experiences in their own right, but if you have a strong preference for one, the other might not scratch it.

What I did object to, was the "legitimately awful games" though, as that is simply not true.

Well, when I say awful, I mean, at the same time I was playing Rocket League and Battlefield 1, Halo 5/MCC with mates and it could be that only 1 friend had the game when I got it (half price in Xbox sale). I really REALLY tried to like Destiny 1 but couldn't penetrate the meta game of levels and shards or whatever. I picked up Destiny 2 and while looking GORGEOUS it plays a bit like a halo horde mode. The light levels and stuff is all too complex to spend time getting into when I can jump into those other online titles with mates or on my own and know the intricacies are smaller hurdles to overcome to enjoy them. I did enjoy Destiny 2's vs mp even though I played it for a small amount of time.

It's a game that's probably A LOT better with friends, it's not the only MMO type game that has this problem. Sea of Thieves is ridiculous fun with mates as is DayZ, The Division and Elder scrolls online but on there own they never reach the same levels. If this becomes free with gold or cheap enough for friends to get then we'd probably reap the rewards but even then there's 4 of us, which is the norm for the games I listed but needing 6 mates is too much imo. I don't mind playing SoT's and DayZ alone though, they are quite relaxing games (unless you hear other folk in DayZ's case). One small point to note is (and it's very particular to me), I can play SoT's and Elder scrolls online rather easily with my 8 year old, SoT's in particular caters excellently for 2 of us on a sloop but she just couldn't get on with Destiny 2. I'll see if I can get my one friend to try it again over the weekend, one problem was that he had been playing it for a couple of months before I tried so I was confused as to what was going on.

One more thing is the small problem of PUBG holding our online gaming time hostage.

Disgaea 5 (PC) - Haven't played a Disgaea game in a while and had forgotten just how brain melting an experience it can be at times.

Its taking me a while to re-acquaint myself with the myriad of systems and mechanics.

Yeah that's all fair enough, Photek.

It does have its systems-within-systems, though I do think they have made it clearer now. It was particularly obtuse by the end of D1.

Likewise, progression is a bit easier. Basically if the number of your gear is higher, it'll contribute to your level going up. They streamlined that a bit too.

It definitely helps having friends. There's plenty of stuff you can do solo, and everything bar two activities has matchmaking, but it definitely helps if you have an active crew. If you have four, you should ask around - on here, on LFG - you'll probably be able to find someone easily. Might easily be able to find someone in your neck of the woods too. It'd be well worth the effort, as the raids are great examples of communication, execution and teamwork. As I said, the raids are something no other console FPS offers at this moment.

Some of the more complicated PVE events definitely don't feel like horde more in Halo. A lot of them you will only need two others for as well. The raid is the only one where you need six.

The raids all sound amazing which makes it more annoying they’re hard to get to play them. It sounds like they could be similar to a PUBG as in, with a squad when you encounter others it all gets very tactical and you need to co-ordinate to survive.

I have recently started using an app called GamerLink for all my Destiny LFG/LFM needs. It acts as a hub to meet people playing a tonne of MP focused games. In the past few days I have managed to clear most of what I had left to do in OG Destiny with players who have found me there.

I mostly have raids and Taken war quests left to do and then I can maybe consider Destiny 2's DLC.

My advice would be not to both infusing while you're still levelling. You're 500ish which is relatively low (given that it slows down a little from about 580 or whatever). Infusing at that point is wasteful and counter productive, as when your level increases again you'll just need to infuse again. Plus the materials must be annoying to grind for.

Just use the legendaries that you have at a higher level and replace them when higher ones drop. That way you'll use a lot of the guns too and maybe find some new favourites.

Also you don't need your highest stuff equipped for the drops to be higher. It calculates it based on all your equipment.

Having recently picked up both Black Ops 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2 on launch day, I'm naturally playing through Ninja Gaiden on Xbox One backwards-compatibility, and it's still as utterly brilliant as it ever was.

Hello!
I play NBA 2K18
Want to try NBA2k19. Can't wait till I get it !

Meanwhile, on my PS4...

Just started playing Diablo 3 for Switch...I've literally just paid £40 for handheld mode which I probably could have achieved via streaming my PC copy to a tablet but it's still brilliant on the Switch.

Also started playing Saturday Morning RPG on Switch which has been pretty good fun so far but it just depends how long it is. If they keep it short then it'll be a great game.

EDIT: How Long to Beat says 4 hours which sounds about perfect to me.