There’s a game called Heaven’s Vault which has the same gameplay premise centred on deciphering a language. Ever played that? (I have it in my backlog - wanna try both it and CoS)
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I’ve seen Heaven’s Vault mentioned a couple of places, including the GMTK video. It looked interesting enough that I added it to my wishlist, but that list is long so I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to get around to it.
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Finished Mass Effect 3 on Insanity.
Giving me both the Insanity III and the Long Service achievement.
It was a good ride. (the best)
Like many, I do not like the ending (I have an immense dislike for the starchild, it’s Bethesda level of writing).
But, I still consider Mass Effect 3 to be the best of the trilogy.
I appreciate the fact that, like Mass Effect 2 in a way, the game fully assumes its theme, and allow everything to be about it. Mass effect 2 was building a team for a mission, Mass Effect 3 is about a total war.
It’s something that I miss from this era of games : games could release in a 3 year window, so were ready to have a distinct assumed theme, and aesthetic variation, and not forced to be generalist to stand for as long as possible.
The crew interactions were improved over ME2, more numerous, more organic, better designed too (no need to enter conversation to see if something new was triggered, barks do fine)…
The trilogy-long story arcs nail the landing. The game can be narratively optimized (and I did), but the number of variations is honestly stunning.
The mobility of the combat is better than ME2, slightly faster too, and with better variety of build.
But I do miss ME2 way of handling shield/barrier/armour. It demanded better assessment, and awareness. It was more deliberate, and demanded more multi-stepped engagement.
Finally, the greatest dialogue wheel of the trilogy :
(it’s the Citadel DLC, it’s self-aware for comedic purpose)
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“I’ve been waiting for this!”
11 days late and some uncertainity but my collector’s edition of Persona 3 Reload finally arrived today. Not really happy with how Amazon handled this but whatever, it’s finally here, it’s undamaged. Once I clean up my living room I plan to display this on my shelves.
After my last post on this thread I actually caved and bought the standard version of Persona 3 Reload, I’ve actually played like half the game already. I don’t really doing that though, I’ve been stuck at home the last week and have just gone back to work today, albeit part time. The collector’s edition has a sealed normal copy of the game inside so plan to sell that off and just replace it with the version I’ve already bought and opened, and hopefully recoup most of the money from the standard version I bought a week ago. I guess a bit of a sad thing to do, but honestly, I don’t regret it.
This is a gorgeous, faithful remake of Persona 3. I enjoyed playing Persona 3 Portable on an emulator a year and a half ago, but I must admit I didn’t quite enjoy it to the extent of Persona 4 Golden or Persona 5 Royal, part of it being the limitations that P3P had to make to get the game running on the Playstation Portable. Reload being a current gen title, with a ton of voice acting, including every social link and nearly every cutscene being fully voiced adds so much to the story telling experience. Not to mention all the various quality of life improvements in the gameplay and modern touches in the fights, dungeons, and fusion. I may never love Tartarus honestly but this version at least has a lot of nice touches, tweaks, and twists for Tartarus so that it is a lot less monotonus.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on Reload if you ever get around to it @Freezer since I know you’re a big P3 fan. In the meantime, I’m having a lot of fun with this.
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Not playing it YET! But the Tomb Raider Remasters… I’ve prepurchased for the Switch. I’m wondering when the files for these will start downloading (like a preload). Or will they start downloading when the game finally goes live this Wednesday? 
From what I’ve seen (re: the “remastered” levels) looks great so far. Can’t wait to… Dive in.
And if I should attempt a playthrough marathon with no deaths 
I’m pretty sure 2 will give me the hardest time.
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I am playing Vaas - Insanity and the performance of Michael Mando (Vaas Montenegro) is credible.
This clip is one of the best moment I felt in the level -
This short play has deep meaning especially in International Politics 
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Re: TR Remastered. Well, I haven’t gotten that far. Maybe it’s not a good idea to not save. 1st playthrough I made it all the way up to St. Francis’ Folly and fall from the top because I got the roll and jump buttons mixed up. 
2 more deaths and a soft lock bug later I get back up to St. FF again, get a message that I’ll need to go into work on my night off and save and exit.
The controller I’m using… I dunno. I suppose I’ll have to connect that Saturn dual analog controller to my Switch and see if I can set the buttons to something that feels familiar. Again, the controller I’m using… Its layout is similar to the PS, but I guess I don’t remember what orientation those buttons were in.
I suppose I can find my old PS game discs, pop it into my PS2… assuming the old memory cards still work, and see what the button arrangement was on one of those games.
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Maybe this helps?
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kay well I finished RE3 Remake tonight!
It was… good! Just good, really. It was a pretty darn linear action-horror title, lots of scenes where Nemesis attacks but it’s all clearly scripted or for dramatic effect, but overall I enjoyed the ride and loved seeing Jill’s resilience against Nemesis just coming back again, and again, and again, and even again!!
Jill feels like the ultimate Final Girl. Like she escaped the horrors in RE1, but still they keep tracking her down, almost as unstoppable as she is. Love her uber-powerful skillset lol.
God damn, the game is gorgeous. That RE Engine is amazing, their artists are amazing. It all looks very high-quality and realistic. Damn good job.
Oh yeah, I also played the game with Ray Tracing on for those sweet shadows and accurate lighting. Spooky AF, plus the game mostly ran at/close to 60fps. IDK why because RE2 wasn’t like that, but this is indeed a smaller game I guess.
The gore was turned down for some reason in this entry compared to the first, but the zombies and other monsters were still really ugly and gross-looking.
I liked that the “Regenerating” enemies near the end match the same style as the “Mold Regenerator” enemies in RE7 DLC. Very pale, blistering skin, but a lot of steam comes out of their body to show you they’re healing themselves. It’s a pretty cool detail to unify the games’ monster/ability continuity.
I really liked seeing/hearing Jeff Schine in this game as Carlos.
I haven’t heard that guy since he played Javier in the Walking Dead! Dude’s got a really cool voice, and he played a kind of great wingman who’s actually one of the very few nice UBCS soldiers.
Overall, I enjoyed my time. I got spooked a lot. I like that it’s short since it means if ever I want to play it again it’s not a big time-sink, but the pacing does feel pretty damn weird in the game.
There’s a moment where Jill gets poisoned and knocked out, and I think “ohh, I’m gonna jump back to Carlos for some gameplay to fill the time”
Nope. The game cuts to “roughly half a day later”. LMAO what?? Jill is just left unconscious for some reason for like 10 hours!
Since I’m done this now, I think I’ll try out Going Under for my next single-player romp. Been in my backlog for a while, I need to get to it. The deaths in RE3 frustrated me, but I’m in the mood for a good roguelike where even deaths feel like some sort of progress (and each new life brings another randomized dungeon)
A good 8 of those deaths were in the Nemesis Stage 2 fight in the Underground Lab. Damn, man. I loaded myself up on bullets and few health items, and I never got a good hang on dodging.
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Since the internet was mostly down for us yesterday and I was sick and resting on the couch, I did manage to set-up my laptop nearby, a controller, and started playing the original Assassins Creed from 2007 that I bought/downloaded earlier this week for 5$.
Oh yeah first of all, it’s funny how this game has every NPC using some french or italian, or syrian dialect, but Altair is generic american voice man. He’s also… very flat in his delivery 
Also this game has Nolan North as Miles?? Before he became a massive success I guess?? Wow.
It’s… uh, “good”?
What surprised me the most is that this is much different from Ubisoft’s modern “open-world-extravaganza” titles. You start off the game in a small area, finish a few main missions, then have to ride on horseback to an even bigger, proper “open-world-ish” area of Damascus. You can climb towers and Sync to reveal an area of the map as well as “main tasks and side tasks”(and the side tasks are extremely simple and repetitive: save a citizen, then you unlock some special NPCs in the area to help avoid guards) – and that’s essentially all it does.
It’s strange. It feels like this is mostly a linear adventure, that happens to have a larger world to run around in freely, but is definitely not the type of game Ubisoft is known and mocked for today.
It’s a bare-bones version of it, which is a little unexpected.
What surprised me the most here is that they actually start you super-powerful for the beginning of the game and then strip you of all your skills to build them back up again. (combat counters, extra damage, breaking your fall in parkour -things like that) That was surprising and a bit sad.
What I don’t quite like is that there’s a “social stealth” system, but it’s incredibly sensitive. You have to hold a button and walk veeeery slowly when you’re on ground-level to avoid guard’s suspicions (and they will always be suspicious of you if you aren’t holding this button) You can mitigate this by going across rooftops – and man, it’s quite fun, albeit a little janky and incredibly specific where/how you can climb a building…
It’s also weirdly archaic in terms of mechanics and settings. Which I feel like might be why there isn’t a remaster of this game on modern consoles because it would require lots of extra work to improve.
- First of all, there’s no subtitle settings. You better listen hard because there’s no transcription of dialogue in this game. It’s a choice I’m mostly okay with. Characters over-enunciate and I sure know english. (Though one scene in the Modern Day section had you listening to two people through a vent for a good minute or two – and MAN, I didn’t understand a word of what was said because of how filtered it was…
- There’s a bit of strange controller support for this game on PC. Steam’s own “customize controller settings” feature helped figure it out a little bit, but I had to install a mod to properly display and re-map the controls in-game to a standard controller steup.
- The side-missions, if I can even call them that, are horribly basic. Now, I’m just in the first big area of the game, but before getting to the main mission, I went around and unlocked all the towers and finished all the side-tasks, and man, there were only two types.
“Investigation Missions” where you find details about a Main Target you have to kill and tidbits of info about how best to do it (these mini-missions come in flavours of Pickpocketing, Eavesdropping, Interrogation,)
There’s also extremely repetitive “Save Citizen” missions dotted around, which have one NPC being harassed by guards who you have to kill, then you talk to them and they say one of two lines, and that’s it. It’s extremely repetitive, I think I’ll be avoiding that the further I get into this.
But I am intrigued enough to keep going, and heck, if I decide to keep my PS Extra subscription, then hopefully I’ll still be able to tackle other beloved, more fleshed-out titles in the series like AC2.
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Playing through the tomb raider remaster. It feels like a vault of core childhood memories to me. I was always shit at them and used cheats lol.
But not this time! At 32, I’m finally able to play these games the proper way. Blind, getting stuck, figuring shit out and get that sweet dopamine release.
I beat 1 and just now, 2 also. 2 has insane levels of old game bullshit but I love the experience all the same. 1 was a blast to play through. 3 was always my favourite so I cant wait to start it tomorrow. (I’ve cheated a little and played the first level 5 times while doing 1 and 2 lmao, its too good)
And maybe I’m weird but those new textures does absolutely nothing for me so I play almost exclusively in old school mode. With tank controls, like it was meant to be. 10/10 gaming 
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Been going through the effort of modding GTA IV on Steam Deck, fortunately I can say after two days and some trial and errors I’m ready to play the actual Complete Edition.
Notable Mods:
Niko Customization/Wardrobe Overhaul
First Person:
EFLC Weapons Merge and Continuity Fix:
Updated Map/Mini Map/Crosshairs:
The goal mainly was just to update the game while keeping it vanilla. Weapons are more responsive, alongside combat encounters are more dangerous too. But I wanted to merge elements from the DLC into the base game alongside various changes made to Characters in EFLC.
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Did you find a mod that makes the general camera and running handling more feel like a PC game and not a ported controller game?
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Unfortunately to my knowledge there aren’t mods that refine keyboard and mouse controls. Maybe GTA 4 Extra Options might have what you need but idk.
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Finished the original Assassin’s Creed yesterday on PC.
TL;DR Version:
Overall, I enjoyed my time but it’s a pretty mediocre game with very little to do outside of the main missions.
It felt like a tech demo (the detailed parkour concept) with a story added onto it, and then that’s where the budget & time ran out.
The only other things are simple lead-up missions to each main target, saving civilians with only 4 voice-lines, and collecting hundreds of flags (yeah, hundreds) that offer ZERO benefit to you, the player.
The Long Version:
The parkour was a very fun, surprisingly complex and detailed system (It’s pretty cool how realistically Altair grabs onto and places his feet on the environment to climb buildings), but albeit kind of slow and rigid sometimes which I hope the sequels improve.
This video makes me excited and afraid of the additions/removals to mechanics the rest of the series does.
The quests you need to complete to unlock the Main Assassination of the level are very repetitive, and tedious, which is probably made worse by the vague guard detection system that will either cause you to run and hide and reset the mission, or slow your gameplay to a crawl to blend in…
The Main Target missions are where the meat of the game’s story and intrigue come in, as you’re tasked with killing 9 important Templar people, all evil and cruel in ways, because they’re seeking an item to cause world domination.
But, they also plant seeds of doubt in the main character’s head about what his own organization may be hiding from him and controlling him to do…
The guard “social stealth indicator” is a small triangle on the top left of your screen.
Its either white when you’re safe from a guard’s gaze, turns yellow when you’re being watched, and blinks red with an annoying noise when an “Informed” guard is spotting you, forcing younto either hide or hold “Blend” which causes you to very slowly walk in prayer.
But it’s difficult to know which guard does this and honestly I can’t figure out if there’s any specific indicator (apart from when you’re on rooftops, which is illegal)
Apparently the PC Director’s Cut version replaces/adds certain lead-up mission types to the main assassination of each chapter, which are Archer-Stealth Assassination missions, Rooftop Time Trials, Escort Missions, and Merchant Stand Destruction missions.
That last one is a baffling inclusion. Merchant stands feel like set dressing or an occasional parkour-stepping-stone, and while there’s a mechanic to throw an enemy into the stand to collapse it and insta-kill them, it’s a pretty niche move and it’s strange how simple/trivial/random this mission type is compared to all the others… doesn’t exactly feel like anything useful for an Assassin or a Parkour fiend…
The story itself I enjoyed, even if it was kind of basic.
Basically, there’s the Modern Day story where Desmond Miles is kidnapped by a secret group and forced to plug his brain into this magic-tech machine that can read DNA and recreate his ancestor’s memories
…This is what you play in the historical setting where you’re parkouring around the place and part of an Assassin Order.
The “Memory” story of the game shows the story of Altair – a skilled but cocky assassin – who is stripped of all his fancy tools by his Master/Handler because he was an idiot who broke the Creed by which the whole Assassin Brotherhood operates. (This is literally the first thing you see him do and his friends chastise him for - not a great first impression, dude)
He then uncovers a secret plot to install a New World Order by controlling the populations of Hebrews and Christians and must stop this mysterious enemy from fulfilling their goals.
Oh, and also get humbled along the way about how to behave like a good, noble person.
The ending of the game
has a shocking twist where it’s revealed your own master - the Assassin Leader - is actually a secret Templar agent who wanted to kill off all his accomplices so he could have the magic treasure to himself.
Honestly a pretty good twist I didn’t expect, and had a pretty tough final boss battle, since he does extreme amounts of damage and the counter timing is super tight.
However, the combat is pretty basic and I found myself wanting extra tools to get around annoyances like everyone always blocking attacks, barely getting a hit in because no one gives you time for offense, and the end-game throwing you into arenas with hugs amounts of enemies that always take way too many hits/counters to take down.
So… yeah. This was a neat introduction to how the whole series started and how all this Assassinating and Parkouring works, but you can definitely tell it was still in its early stages of being fleshed out. The main concept is there, but everything other than that feels extremely lacking.
The Modern Day Story ends on a cliffhanger too, and I hope to see the gameplay in that evolve in future entries, since they were essentially slow walking interludes.
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Oh dear lord nobody tell him a thing…
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Oh I am playing Yakuza: Kiwami because it was six bucks on special off PSN. Having a lot of fun doing everything but the main story, that Majima fellow really is everywhere.
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