Currently Playing in 2020...

FFIX - Just finished the Mount Gulug bit, strawberry floating hell those red dragons are absolute twats, had my entire party wiped out so many times by them, kept trying to get Vivi to cast Death but the little gooseberry fool missed almost every time.

Twelve restarts later I got lucky and pulled it off twice in a row.

Might need to level up a bit now.

Also, the Chocobo treasure hunt can strawberry float right off, playing it with an onscreen keyboard is a horrible experience as it doesn't allow diagonal movement.

Still playing the Witcher, 3 months later. Wandering around Skellige these days.

Started Transistor last night and was really struggling to get into it. Played some more today and now about 3 hours in. Still struggling. I loved Bastion but I cant seem to click with this. Spent ages in the practice area playing around with the load out and its cool seeing what the system can do but as soon as I go back into an actual level it falls apart for me. It looks stunning and sounds great (although the narration this time feels quite flat and humourless sadly) but I need help. People who love this please help me love it too. Am I suppose to be using the turns pretty much all the time? I only seem to be able to start combos in one specific way and I'm not sure how much of an effect it has.

ITSMILNER wrote:

ITSMILNER wrote:Pokemon Shield - Nintendo Switch

Loving this right now, i'm 2 gyms down and building my team of 'mon. I think the game looks fantastic, the different towns all have their own unique look and feel to them and I love the stadium aspect of facing the gym leaders, feels like a big event compared to previous games I played.

I also love how you now have to complete missions as well as fight trainers to reach the gym leader. great idea and mixes things up.

I don't really understand the hate this got really, seems a great game to me.

3 gyms down and just reached Hammerlocke, current team

Pikachu
Hitmonchan
Corvisquire
Cinderace
Rillaboom
Inteleon

Dropped Galarian Ponyta from my team as she wasn’t really proving all that useful and levelled really slowly. Hammerlocke looks really cool so will explore that next

7 gyms down now and still really enjoying this, part of the new expansion pass content drops this week but I want to wrap up the main game before I play that.

Started playing MGS Ground Zeroes again and it's such an incredible stealth playground to mess around in. The control and movement is so fluid and natural that it's just a joy to play and watch.

Just got one more cassette to collect to get the relevant trophy and then I'll move onto MGSV while my desire to play is still high. Haven't played it since release and I'm now so excited to dive back into a fresh playthrough.

Ground Zeroes is the best part of MGSV

Agreed, Ground Zeroes is a perfect little sandbox.

I still think MGSV in general is a fantastic game, I just wish it would leave me alone more and let me play it the way I want to at times!

Despite being one of the mechanically best games I've ever played, there is a lot I'd change about MGSV. Starting with the map design (and choice of full open world).

As for what I'm playing...

OrangeRKN wrote:

Vermilion wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:I need to get 4

It's really cheap at the moment too.

Well, I just ordered it (from simplygames)

Been beating all of Verm's records over the weekend ( )

It's definitely better than 3 by virtue of me not being stuck in loading screens (other than initial boot). It's also very fun and scratching the Just Cause itch. I think 2 is probably still the best in the series though, unfortunately. 4 has really fun weapons - I like how they went all-in on forgetting realism and just giving everything interesting and ridiculous secondary fires. The tether options are really fun and the most developed yet, if a little fiddly. The front-lines are impressive and add a lot of flavour and if you approach them right the illusion holds up, it's just a shame you can't actually have an effect fighting on them as the enemies just constantly respawn. Pushing forwards the front lines from the map screen is also very anti-climatic (I miss raiding bases with a squad of rebels!). The big new extreme weather gimmick is fun to mess around with (tornadoes specifically). Where the game is worse though is in the things it weirdly drops. (Almost) all of those things to destroy are still there, but they are no longer tracked, which makes it a lot less satisfying. I spent countless hours clearing out villages and bases in 2, but in 4 the requirement for destruction is dropped, instead attaching mini-challenges to each location for completion (destruction is only to increase the more abstract chaos bar). These mini-challenges are mostly rubbish too. Previous games had loads of vehicle races and in 3 there were loads of wingsuit ring races. In 4 the vast majority are single rings. It's like they are placeholders for the actual challenges that they ran out of time to actually make. Some of the things to destroy that were in previous games are also missing - no more statues to tear down, billboards to remove or propaganda vans to destroy. These actions contributed flavour to the very soul of Just Cause, it's baffling how they have been almost removed entirely.

It's good how the series hasn't stagnated, but I do wonder if they never really understood everything that made 2 so good. As it is 4 has some very disappointing omissions and what feels like cut content. Still plenty of fun, but still disappointing given what it should have been.

It's the Far Cry 5 of Just Cause games

I've not played much of Just Cause 4 yet - I think it was free recently on something which I why I grabbed it and have played a few hours here and there. So far though I pretty much agree with everything you are saying OR - it's still got a huge number of things going for it but does seem like some of the soul of the series has been lost, as well as some of the changes like removing the need to destroy bases etc. meaning that some of the more satisfying aspects of the previous games have been eroded to a degree.

I can't find a suitable clip from 4, but this "little" thing annoys me too - stealing helicopters.

In Just Cause 2 you'd cling to the front of the chopper where you could have a shootout with the passengers before doing a QTE to hijack the vehicle. It's maybe a little drawn out but it was fun and carried some risk:



In Just Cause 4, there is no QTE (you just instantly throw the pilot out) and the equivalent helicopter with passengers you hang underneath, so rather than having a shootout with the occupants you just awkwardly shoot them in the legs while they just sit there unable to shoot you. The standard attack helicopter, unlike in 2, never has any passengers.

I'm pretty sure in 2 if you aimed a grapple right you could also hank the passengers out of a helicopter. In 4 whenever I've grappled a passenger I've instead zipped towards the helicopter with no effect on the passenger, only to go into freefall on collision because I was connected to the person and not the vehicle (otherwise you would hang from the underneath).

Another mechanic - in Just Cause 2 you could cling to the front of vehicles and jump between moving vehicles - it was all very Pursuit Force and very fun. Unless I'm missing something none of that is in 4 either.

Red Dead Redemption 2
I love so much about this game, it looks incredible, the voice acting is a cut above, the world is phenomenal, the characters memorable, etc. The only downside is that I'm struggling to get into any sort of 'loop'. I play a mission and put the game down where as the more traditional open world design of Spideman or even The Witcher 3 has so many easily accessible things to do that I can play them for hours. I do think that exploration, freedom, less clutter on the maps is how open world games should progress but much like with BOTW I really need to be in the mood to go off and explore. I don't know why, one of my favourite things to do in Fallout 3 was to put a random marker on the map and go and see what was there but I'm just not motivated to do that in this game. Time is probably a bit factor, maybe I'm just a big loot whore but I didn't expect to find this so easy to walk away from this and not think about it.

Magna Carta II

I was pleasantly surprised by this, and I quite quickly put 13 or so hours into it. It's a fairly standard RPG with some interesting ideas, but a few annoyances aside, it's been enjoyable to play. I've just hit a difficulty spike though in the form of a long, arduous stretch of enemies followed by a mini-boss and then a boss, with little to no chance of stocking up on items, and failure meaning you have to go through the whole slog again.

One thing I always hate in games is having to redo gooseberry fool that I've already done, so that pisses me off for starters, but also I've really come to hate bosses in games. They only ever seem to disrupt my enjoyment of the game, and/or act as difficulty spikes. I genuinely can't remember the last boss fight I had where I thought "Hmm, this is fun!" - all they do is piss me off and waste my time.

OrangeRKN wrote:Been beating all of Verm's records over the weekend ( )

I noticed that.

Beat your parachute drift feat yesterday though.

I do like the records it keeps for these things, that was fun in 3 as well (not sure if they did it in 2?)

I don't think it did, although it had achievements for similar things

Brief spell on Animal Crossing, Reyn time this evening

Currently trying to get better on Dragon Ball Fighters Z. I'm terrible at it but it's such a good game. Nothing beats playing as Frieza and then transforming into Gold Frieza. Its such a stylish game and easy to play. I've got all the season pass(s) and will probably keep getting them as the game gets bigger and bigger.

RDR2

At this point it feels like the gaming equivalent of a high quality TV series such as the Sopranos, i drop in, play an hour, am utterly mesmerized by performances and plot development, and then happily turn it off, with no anxiety about what i might have to do next (everything is clearly marked) or whether i will get stuck (its really easy, even with the auto aim etc turned off).

Murder By Numbers

Started this a few days ago and am loving it. I have always enjoyed Picross, but have always felt a little dirty about it. It always seemed like it was a simple time killer, and something that just went on and on. Here the framing device really helps to give it a structure, and all the supporting elements (music, visuals, story) are great.

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:Murder By Numbers

...Here the framing device really helps to give it a structure, and all the supporting elements (music, visuals, story) are great.

Yeah Ironhide.

Detroit: Become Human