The opener is so strong and it gets better with each level!
5 Likes
Man… I love Hi-Fi Rush, but I am sooo bad at it (despite usually getting Bs or As during fights, because it’s incredibly unforgiving).
I will boot it up and spend some time practicing the combos and making sure my timing is good and memorizing rhythm patterns… only to, as soon as a fight starts, completely lose the beat and start mashing.
I usually end up using the same one or two combos/patterns despite having more at my disposal. I also think that, in my older age perhaps, it’s harder for me to “get good” for fights as my vision has a hard time keeping up with the amount of stuff going on on screen.
The game is charming as hell and incredibly polished. I love pretty much everything about it. 808’s tag is even stylized after Metallica’s logo. 
Both the gameplay and musical/cultural context throughout are professionally done. It’s a serious GOTY contender… but I’m sooo bad at the rhythm combat.
6 Likes
Had very much the same experience, dude - my moves are much more button-mashing than they are strikes done with precise intent. But like you say, everything else about the game is so good that you don’t mind when you’re scraping through with scrub skills because you’re just having so much fun regardless.
3 Likes
It took me over six months, but I finally beat Ascension 20 and got the platinum trophy in Slay the Spire. 
Now I just need to beat A20 with the other three characters…and start going for Heart kills… 
6 Likes
Arkham Knight riddler trophies are killing me 
I’ve been playing the Arkham games (very slowly) for the last year and I’ve been getting 100% each time but this final sprint to the finish is pretty tough. I don’t think Arkham city was even this bad
6 Likes
I love collecting Riddler stuff in all the Arkham games (to the point where I can find them all without marking any on the map), but something I always try to tell people is don’t save them to the end and collect them all in one sitting. It’s much better to collect a handful, do a side mission objective or challenge map, then come back to do more.
3 Likes
Gave the Final Fantasy XVI demo a try and I’m…impressed. The graphics, naturally, are top-notch, the music approaches Nobuo Uematsu levels of epic-ness at times, the Eikons are awesome versions of the summons and the world and story are intriguing. (Though I hope there are locations a bit more vibrant than a barren canyon, a brackish swamp and a gray stone castle.)
And, I have to admit, the combat feels fun. I’m old, so action combat is never going to feel like proper Final Fantasy to me, but, in the early going at least, it’s a lot more fluid and engaging than whatever the hell was going on in XV. I’ll probably never be super-proficient at it, but the story-focused mode gives you access to some optional artifacts that do helpful things like auto-potion, simplify combos or evade automatically so you can kind of customize the difficulty. (I don’t quite need the last one…but there’s also one that slows down time when you’re about to get hit, giving you a larger evasion window that I appreciate.)
I think I’m off the fence and might climb on the hype train. 
6 Likes
I just played the demo of the Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective remaster. It seems like a really fun game, and I’ll definitely get it on June 30. Apparently for playing the demo you unlock 2 side backgrounds and an extra music track to listen to in the main game which is a nice little bonus.
4 Likes
WHAT
WHEN WAS THIS ANNOUNCED MMMMM
I’m sad you still can’t pre-order the game on Playstation, I’m still getting it Day 1 tho omg.
One of the best narrative titles from the DS.
5 Likes
I am playing War Zone 2.0. They released a new map Vondel yesterday.
As always I take the character of Agent 47 in every game I play. Here -
My Clan Tag : 47
User Id: zubin47
Level: 47
Operator: Konig (after unlocking free by stealth takedown like agent 47)
DMZ mode is getting more interesting now.
If you are at Warzone 2.0, please let me know (send your id / find my id). We could team up together.
4 Likes
I’m playing Eukarion Tales 2. It’s an action rpg released in 2010, but published in Steam in April 2023. An old and simple game, but very enjoyable. It makes me want to replay Diablo, that I played only once when I was a child
[image]
3 Likes
Finally got out of the Zelda TOTK Tutorial area.
The new Blood Moon cutscene is spooky AF. Also I’ve noticed that Zelda’s VA seems to have improved quite a bit from the first entry.
6 Likes
Okay, so! Tears of the Kingdom first impressions.
A little ramble of my impressions from the start of the game to the end of the “tutorial/introduction quests”.
- The game starts out with a brief scripted movement tutorial that also sets the stage for the main conflict of the game (and how you go back to square one). That got me kinda hyped, since BOTW mostly just throws you right into the open area.
- The sky islands are very pretty and unique in terms of music, enemies, traversal and design.
- Goat Man is pretty cool.
- The “tutorial” is very similar to BOTW’s structure. It’s probably even better for newcomers since it limits where you can go/see and explains quite a bit of hidden info on systems through hint cards or control pop-ups. (Weapons breaking causes 2x damage, how to shield surf, etc)
- The building mechanic is pretty neat. The initial area feels like the objects left around usually only have one intended, easy-to-deduce solution to get past puzzles/areas, but I’m sure there’ll be more challenging and vague builds later.
- I got stuck in a dead end area at one point, in a snowy region with no warm clothing, with unclimbable cliffs and a bottomless pit beneath me for like 30 minutes or more. It was frustrating, fun to try to build things to get out, and I finally did that and found the one rock slab of cliff behind a waterfall I could use to make it up. Wow.
- The story in this game is already super intriguing. I remember seeing people theorize from the trailers that Zelda somehow gets trapped in the past for her safety (and to help Link somehow), and it seems they are right. It hasn’t been completely confirmed but heavily hinted. Cool!
- Once I finally got to Hyrule Kingdom, it was neat walking around and seeing some small changes already, chasing a few shrines.
Then I looked up. And realised there’s still plenty of Sky I have yet to explore. And More
(that I haven’t experienced yet)! And I felt so overwhelmed already omg. - This being a sequel to the calamity/apocalypse-ending event, its really really cool to see that reflected in the world and characters quickly.
There are tons of construction materials already laid about along routes. There is apparently a world-newspaper others read that I’m sure will inform me of new side-quests and places to go. There is a distinct feeling of community and rebuilding of Hyrule in the first town you’re beckoned to. This is a People moving forward together. Nice!
- After finishing the initial series of quests and finally being set free with the basic tools, that’s it, my brain is now going crazy with excitement. Holy cow where do I go, there’s so many new places it wants me to explore and omg where the heck do I start whoaaaa!
Some things to note:
The game unfortunately dips in FPS in small occasions. Usually when activating the Ultrahand building ability, or looking at specific far-off things.
This game had 6 years in the oven from a pretty high-quality team of people (who delayed the game a full year for physics polish) so I’m sure its not unoptimized, just the Switch being pushed to its absolute limit. Wow.
Oh yeah Story confusion: In the very beginning, Mummy Ganon shrugs off the Master Sword like its nothing, and also destroys it like it’s nothing. What the what? I thought it was the “sword of legend” that in BOTW was needed to have defeated Ganon in the past.
But after a quick coma he shrugs it off? Hmmm??
So many quality of life improvements with menus, equipping/dropping inventory items, tutorializing info, guiding the player with quests/NPCs it’s really nice.
I’ve already heard vague spoilers
about the finale to the game, but honestly I’m hyped because of it.
Apparently it is a tight, scripted sequence of events on an epic scale, that differs greatly and is way better than BOTW’s lackluster “empty open field, gallop around this big beast and shoot at glowing spots” final boss
A light scripted sequence prologue and finale would be fantastic ways to bookend this return to the staggering open-world Zelda formula and I can’t wait to see what that is.
6 Likes
Getting the Last of Us Remake for my sister to use was actually a really, really good decision on Accessibility alone.
She’s still a novice at third-person shooter games right? And after a stressful run through the prologue, the first infected encounter and a few human encounters, while she was stressed and confused about the controls (and how stealth-survival games like this work) I managed to convince her to turn on accessibility options.
And boy howdy I forgot how crazy detailed Naughty Dog’s list is.
We’ve turned on lock-on aim, Listen mode ping system, awareness indicators, auto pick-up items, high-contrast mode toggle, and increased the HUD size (it really is pretty small by default)
We’ve also lowered some aspects of the difficulty (thank goodness for custom options) so that should make her live longer, enemies more fragile, and less lethal.
We did just do this after the Wharf combat encounter, so I won’t know how/if this will help her that much until mext play session, but I’m confident.
She kept getting very worried about enemy movement, but forgetting to use listen mode, and the dichotomy between stealth/spotting/spotted she didn’t totally understand. Also missing dropped items and other things in the level (the remake has less of a “exaggerated realism” style than the original, I think items are smaller and ‘flash’ less than usual)
8 Likes
I’m replaying TLOU Part 1 as well, new game om grounded 
amazing game.
8 Likes
I 100%d arkham asylum but the challenge rooms in city were brutal, I gave up. i loved getting the riddler trophies though! zoning out and listening to music while doing collectibles is always cathartic
5 Likes
I met the Rito in TOTK and I now have an urge to make a rito-sized chicken omg I forgot how much I love their wingy hands
2 Likes
Mild Spoilers:
I’ve returned to Tears of the Kingdom after a bit of finally getting to play Hitman Freelancer. I’m liking it on and off. I think the physics puzzles are my biggest bug bear. I dunno, I get it, it is incredibly impressive they could make the engine do this kind of thing. But at times, when I’m playing and I hit a physics puzzle I feel like that if I wanted to do this I’d buy a puzzle game, not something like Zelda. I’m forever reminded of that mocked puzzle in Half-Life 2 where your on the run from the cops, then have to slowly put bricks on the end of a ramp to create enough weight so you can run up the ramp and reach the ledge. Impressive for 2004, “aw how cute” just a few years after.
Otherwise, yeah, Tears is definetly Breath of the Wild 2, for all the good and bad that may bring. I’d be surprised if there are many who like Breath but don’t like Tears, or vice-versa. I’m probably enjoying Tears a bit more mainly because I have a far better idea of what I’m meant to be doing after BotW. I’ll probably do some more side stuff but honestly will probably start to wrap it up earlier rather than later.
Master Detective Archives: Rain Code (pretty confident title for the first game in a new IP but hey) comes out on the 30th. It’s made by Spike Chunsoft and the writer of the Danganronpa series, and since I love Danganronpa and this seems to have a lot of similar DNA, if probably less gruesome, it’s something I definetly want to jump on quite soon.
7 Likes
Heh… I’ve seen the online simping for Rauru. I don’t get it. Dude seems really old & thin.
Sidon is still bae though (I haven’t met him again yet)
Finished my New Game Plus playthrough for Miles Morales on PS5.
the Cat Backpack suit is the best, and I love how they’ve got it appearing in cutscenes (even the cat popping up sometimes)
I did notice the writing seems a little shakey my second time around.
Aaron Davis talks about how he “didn’t want his relationship with Miles to go like how it was with his dad”, but tries to imprison and fight his own nephew to keep him out of the action, somehow thinking this was the right move? Miles is obviously so good-natured and heroic in helping as many people as possible, it’s incredibly foolish and nonsensical that Aaron expected Miles to understand or forgive him right after their battle ends with that line.
Phin being the Tinkerer is still a pretty great antagonist (even though it’s another “close friend of Spidey he must fight against” – but those make for great stories!) but it is pretty baffling how many goons and minions she’s managed to amass for the Underground. Like… who are these people? How’d she find or get sooo many? (She’s still pretty young, same age as Miles? Hard to imagine she’d command sooo much respect and authority)
Also, yeah, the “I’m not listening to you” trope was pretty sucky to use for the final battle. I understand how inevitable it was given all the events prior to it (Miles repeatedly lying or getting into complicated situations around Phin) but something felt pretty off about how long the “your plan was sabotaged! Listen to me! Look at the exploding reactor!” went on for, especially the fight in general…
In other, other news, probably the main Spider-Man 2 theme dropped!
5 Likes
I’ve been tempted to grab Miles Morales lately, I just finished replaying most of the 2018 game at a friend’s place and it has me itching for more. Honestly, the cat backpack suit is maybe half the temptation 
8 Likes