what are you playing?

[YangustheLegendaryBandit 3,579]

I got Red Dead Redemption 2 this morning and had a chance to play it for a few hours this afternoon before going to my family Christmas. The installation to my PS4 took quite a while, but man, pretty worth it. Game looks visually very good, plays alright so far, and I’m liking the lead character Arthur Morgan. Good smartass sense of humor and seems likes a genuinely smart guy in his journal entries. Hearing his voice though, I can’t help but think of Francis from Left 4 Dead. It may not be the same actor, but they sure sound alike!

Before I quit I reached Chapter 2, where you can start doing what you want at your new camp out of the snowy mountains. I enjoyed the opening hours and thought it was a good way to introduce someone how to play. Since I’ve never really played Rockstar games before, I appreciated the chance to learn and to get to know the characters some.

[zcm 8]

DQ XI. I picked it up the day after Xmas, and I'm about 20 hours in. This is the most I have gamed in a year or two. I generally just don't have much time for them anymore, aside from in the winter.

[Bururian 570]

Been playing Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise. I'm enjoying it a lot. It really take a while to get going though.

[Liamland 758]

I started replaying Sword of Mana on my phone. Design-wise it's superior to Secret of Mana-SNES, but it's not as fun, which is the same vibe I got from Legend of Mana-PSX. Sword of Mana does make me nostalgic for that Shinichi Kameoka art style, though. They really got away from that with the Secret of Mana PS4 remake.

 

[Dwaine 1,169]

Even though I don't really play any games anymore, the Resident Evil 2 remake looked mighty tempting. Then I thought, "No! I have owned Resident Evil 7 since 2017! I need to play that first!"

So's I did.
And I loved it all the way through!

It's masterfully made. The first game is one of my favorites because I love the whole haunted house aspect. This one has that and then some! Playing with headphones gives it a perfect atmosphere. Thanks to it you never know if it's the house creaking or something is just around the corner. Exploring the property never got boring. The Baker family were fun and compelling villains. You can tell the voice actors were having fun. "Aw, Ethan, you got you a boom boom?"

The last Resident Evil game I played was 4. It's actually one of my favorite games. I really enjoyed 7 and its epilogue. I'll snag the remake of 2 eventually, but I hope Capcom sticks to this formula for the next game.

[eal 2,647]

12 minutes ago, Dwaine said:

Playing with headphones gives it a perfect atmosphere. Thanks to it you never know if it's the house creaking or something is just around the corner. Exploring the property never got boring. The Baker family were fun and compelling villains. You can tell the voice actors were having fun. "Aw, Ethan, you got you a boom boom?"

I know you don’t really play games much but I would recommend Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice if atmosphere and sound are important to you. Senua suffers from psychosis, and it’s used for game mechanics, one of which involves hallucinating voices, which can help or hinder and will often times berate you. They used binaural audio to give it a more realistic sound, so the game is perfect with the lights out and headphones in. You can finish it in like 6-8 hours if you’re good at the puzzles.

[avensis 6]

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a very narrative, masterful game that will take you away with its atmosphere. The developers have done a crazy job on this game. 

Edited December 6, 2020 by avensis

[eal 2,647]

I picked up the Corpse Party game on Vita, not realizing the first game was a necessity to understand it, so I bought the original game on Steam and that’s what I’ve been playing the last two nights.

I actually played with the lights off, but on the second night, I needed them on. It’s really that scary. It’s scariness is almost brilliant in that, as a game with simple graphics (wasn’t the original version made in RPG Maker or something?), it needs to really on atmosphere to get you. And it does that in spades. It’s a truly miserable game.

Whereas a lot of horror games want you to be moving around, hiding, trying to get you to want to leave a location as quickly as possible, in Corpse Party, it’s almost a requirement to explore every inch and read every note to achieve a good ending for that chapter. I couldn’t finish the first chapter because I missed an item that let me into a room that altered what happened at an important scene towards the end of the chapter. Because of this, you soak in all the horrible notes, signs, etc. that you pass, and it starts to disturb you.

Not for the faint of heart but I have to say that I’m impressed a pixelated RPG Maker game could spook me so much.

[Plattym3 2,451]

Damn, that's scary!

Almost unlocked all the playable characters in SSB. My sons are loving this, soon my oldest will surpass my ability.

[YangustheLegendaryBandit 3,579]

I picked up the Spyro: Reignited Trilogy on Saturday. Aside from taking forever to install to my PS4 (#$*!ing 4 hours of waiting, WAY longer than even Read Dead 2 took which took 2 hours), it’s been pretty fun. It looks like what I imagined Spyro remakes would look like, I’m liking the option to switch between the new arrangement soundtrack or the originals from the PS1 releases, and other details. It plays very smoothly, which you definitely want for a 3D platformer.

I didn’t own the originals growing up, but I had a number of chances to play them at friends/a cousin’s house, so I remember these games fondly as those rare opportunities to play a PS1, and years later I got them for my PSP via the PSN. They were as fun as I remembered them, though a bit odd to play on a PSP admittedly. I’ve mainly played Spyro 1 in the remake trilogy, but so far, this is another smash trio of remakes much like the Crash N. Sane Trilogy before it. Kudos to Toys for Bob and Activision  putting some love and care into these remakes.

Definitely glad I finally picked up the Reignited Trilogy.

Edited May 6, 2019 by YangustheLegendaryBandit

[RyuKisargi 683]

Sowrds of Deetos Marmo's Caurs! That is a gud gaem.

[YangustheLegendaryBandit 3,579]

Finished and platinumed Spyro 1, now on to Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage. I kind of forgot Spyro 1 was a shorter game, and considering I’ve only fully played through it once before I’d say I did pretty good beating it time wise. My new work schedule means my main gaming time is the later evening hours, so Spyro 2 and 3 will be a bit slow going since they are a lot more content heavy.

It was also really easy to platinum the 1st game. Nearly every trophy was something you would have normally done in a level or at least attempted to do. There were a few I thought were odd and probably wouldn’t have gotten if I hadn’t seen the trophy list, but otherwise most of them came from simply playing the game.

[eal 2,647]

Sleeping Dogs is one of my favorite games ever so I’m very happy to say I’ve nearly completed it. I have completed the base game and Nightmare in North Point DLC, but I still have two more things to do.

The only hurdle was the trophy/achievement system baked into game for the purposes of online leaderboards with friends. This game 100% didn’t need it and made completing it a weird grind. I had to replay a bunch of missions to earn lame medals that hold know actual value aside from rubbing it in the faces of all my friends that won’t know because they don’t play the game and see the leaderboards. However, in the process of doing all this, I earned the Platinum trophy, which makes this the rarest Platinum I have (1.9%). So there’s that.

[Fates 269]

Checked out the series a few months ago and have been playing it and Wizardry a lot since. 

Pic is Ultima 3, I'm chilling with Lord British. There's a Famicom/NES version of the game that is very accessible to JRPG players. I think the games have aged pretty well tbh.

As far as Wizardry, I remember when I first picked up Etrian 1 I thought it was the most unforgiving thing I've played. But this is just plain evil. When you go to resurrect there's a possibility a character can be turned to ashes instead. And that's happened to me on EVERY res attempt.

[YangustheLegendaryBandit 3,579]

Spyro 2 progress is going alright. I’m now at the 3rd hub world (Winter Tundra) and have the final set of levels before going after Ripto. Spyro 2 is my favorite game of the PS1 games, and playing through it on the Reignited Trilogy has been great. Some challenges for orbs have thankfully been made much easier (looking at you Breeze Harbor trolly orb challenge!), and the levels feel very vibrant and truly alive. A lot of the minor details in the levels are nice additions.

Edited May 10, 2019 by YangustheLegendaryBandit

[YangustheLegendaryBandit 3,579]

Spyro 3’s progress has been the slowest of the three games for sure. I’ve reached Evening Lake (the third hub world) and have completed Bentley’s level. Man, I don’t remember if he was like this in the original, but Bentley’s little brother is a turd. Not gonna lie, it was fun smacking him with the club Bentley uses as a weapon.

Anyway, I need to backtrack to a few levels now that I have several of the animal characters unlocked, namely ones that require Sgt. Byrd and Bentley. Gotta get those 100% ratings. I’ve platinumed the other two games in the trilogy, so what’s one more, right?! RIGHT?!?!?!

 

(Actually getting trophies and whatnot in the games are pretty easy. Most of them are things you’d do normally anyway. A few oddball ones I had to look at the trophy lists for, but nothing ridiculous or totally out of the way.)

[Monika 2]

I just finished playing Joker 3 recently, pretty fun game but man... the amount of recolored monsters kind of hurt my heart ; (,  It felt like a really short game honestly but I'm glad I finally got around to playing some Dragon Quest lately! It's been quite fun and nostalgic for me now that I've picked up the series again! I have to admit I kind of cheesed the game in a sense and it felt a bit easy at times when you get really lucky at scouting then you end up with an overleveled/overpowered team early. Regardless, I'd play it again. I bet the Pro version is better but I think I'm done with it. No idea where I'll go from here, maybe I'll check out DQ XI? If anyone can vouch for that game haha! I wanna start playing Terry's Wonderland 3D as I'm preeetty sure there's an English patch for it that's been out for awhile so that'll keep me occupied for sure but I don't know if I can handle another game full of grinding and synthesizing. I feel a bit burned out from monsters OTL. 

[Plattym3 2,451]

I just finished playing Joker 3 recently, pretty fun game but man... the amount of recolored monsters kind of hurt my heart ; (,  It felt like a really short game honestly but I'm glad I finally got around to playing some Dragon Quest lately! It's been quite fun and nostalgic for me now that I've picked up the series again! I have to admit I kind of cheesed the game in a sense and it felt a bit easy at times when you get really lucky at scouting then you end up with an overleveled/overpowered team early. Regardless, I'd play it again. I bet the Pro version is better but I think I'm done with it. No idea where I'll go from here, maybe I'll check out DQ XI? If anyone can vouch for that game haha! I wanna start playing Terry's Wonderland 3D as I'm preeetty sure there's an English patch for it that's been out for awhile so that'll keep me occupied for sure but I don't know if I can handle another game full of grinding and synthesizing. I feel a bit burned out from monsters OTL. 

Joker 3 was just fine. Tons of recolors, yes, but it was OK. I actually reviewed it for RPGamer and gave it a 3.5/5, a little bit better than average.

Now, Terry's Wonderland is a whole other ballgame. It's EXCELLENT! I played it right before Joker 3 and even beat the postgame. It kept up a nice pace and I really really enjoyed it. Maybe I was a little burned out after playing it which colored my view of Joker 3, but I found Terry much nicer!

[eal 2,647]

I am playing what is considered to be the visual novel, The House in Fata Morgana. Every review I’ve seen of it has said nothing less than it being a true masterpiece of storytelling so I’m really excited to see how it got that reputation. On first impressions, the art style and music are out of the ordinary for a Japanese VN (though the music doesn’t loop; it stops for a few seconds and then continues). I like the story structure, seeing past events residents of the manor prior to your arrival.

[YangustheLegendaryBandit 3,579]

Smash Ultimate and Mario Odyssey have taken all my gaming time. I’m trying to finish off classic mode for everyone (almost done with all the Brawl era characters) and have been playing in versus matches versus CPUs. I’m wanting to start training my new amiibo, but soon enough.

 

Mario Odyssey meanwhile is getting really really REALLY good. As of now I’ve finished off the Metro Kingdom and can either travel to the Ice Kingdom or the Seaside Kingdom. Since I headed south on the first fork in the road choice, this time I’m heading north. So it’s off to the Ice Kingdom for Mario!

I’m really loving the attention to detail throughout the game. I mean, all the work in the Metro Kingdom alone was fantastic. That whole Kingdom has been my favorite part of the game, with the Wooded Kingdom being a close second. It’s been a Mario game I don’t want to put down, much like Mario 64 or Sunshine. The Galaxy games were great too, but truth be told I never felt as immersed in those games and only played them once.

 

These two games (and Cuphead, which I’m glad I can finally play too!) have been amazing and so much fun. I’m late to the Switch party, but these two have been great ways to break into the system. Hopefully next up will be Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Kirby Star Allies, Octopath Traveler (another game I really really REALLY want to play), Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, or, dare I type it, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. 

[YangustheLegendaryBandit 3,579]

Ok, Classic mode has been completed with all the characters in Smash Ultimate/DLC characters who are currently available. Smash Ultimate has been my go to game after work since it’s quick and easy to get in and out of matches/single player content. I’m close to having all the spirits unlocked, but I’m starting to hit a brick wall on earning them. I’m also not super happy that a number of challenges on the challenge board are online only. Unless I get Nintendo Online or whatever their new service is, that panel of challenges may go unnoticed.

 

Super Mario Odyssey continues to impress. Since I have Wednesdays off it’s become a day of gaming and Super Mario Odyssey has been the lucky winner for awhile. I got through several kingdoms (Snow, Seaside, Luncheon, Ruined Kingdom), and almost have 400 Power Moons. As of now I’ve reached Bowser’s Kingdom, and...well, wasn’t expecting the theme for it, but it looks cool, particularly the background and skies.

This Mario game is becoming a favorite game of all time for me, as every new Kingdom I go to is a treat to explore and play through. Despite it being out for nearly 2 years, I’ve managed to avoid spoilers on the game (other than some footage from trailers but those don’t make sense without context) and man, I’m really glad I did. I’ve loved seeing what surprises the devs put in, the platforming challenges, the return of Mario characters/enemies (including a surprise appearance of a Yohsi’s Island character), the many costumes Mario can wear, the absolutely stellar soundtrack....man, there are so many wonderful things about this game I can’t properly express it!

[eal 2,647]

I finally finished Batman: Arkham Origins last night. I say “finally” because I was stuck fighting Deathstroke for hours before I finally gave up and never touched it again. I bought the Wii U version (I was originally playing on PS3) and used that as an opportunity to try again. I realized what I was doing wrong and beat Deathstroke this time around. But I digress...

...when I first played it, I was confused why people thought it was inferior to the previous two games since it was essentially all the stuff people liked but with some extra stuff. I realized that it was because the combat and overall gameplay feels slightly downgraded enough to be noticeable and the open world was not only uninspired, it was also bad to traverse. There’s a giant bridge separating the two halves of Gotham and until you unlock fast travel for some districts, your only recourse is to grapple the whole way.

The story could have been interesting, Batman has to fight his way through a gauntlet of assassins hired to kill him while he searches for the man who put the bounty on his head, instead it’s another story about the Joker. Instead, the majority of the assassins are side quests you choose to take part in, which is weird since the idea is they’re coming after you. Also, the timeline of events are incredibly busted. It takes place on Christmas Eve night, and in that night, you track and arrest Joker, he goes to jail, is given an evaluation by Harleen Quinzel, and stages a breakout. All on one night.

I’m glad I got that monkey off my back but I probably won’t revisit it.

[eal 2,647]

Nobody play Uncharted 3. It’s glitchy as #$*!, which makes some sections, especially fights, incredibly frustrating, it throws bullshit at you and says, “good luck, champ,” it’s janky, it’s actually crashed on me, and the story isn’t even good compared to the rest of the series. I’m like 2 hours left and determined to finish it and then never touch it again. I actually hate it.

[Plattym3 2,451]

Nobody play Uncharted 3.

Done.

[YangustheLegendaryBandit 3,579]

43 minutes ago, Plattym3 said:

Done.

 

Joke’s on you, it has an optional turn based mode! Now you HAVE to play it! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!