Gaming Discussion Thread

The spearfishing minigame in Y6 is pretty fun stuff. Underwater fishing combined with an on-rails shooter makes for a quirky combination.

Even though the execution isn't always up to snuff, I appreciate how they always branch out and try new zany stuff for the side activities, on top of the staple returning ones. Like, chicken races in Y5 were a fucking grind (to train the chickens), but it sure as hell made me laugh at least.

Fuck the inclusion of Puyo Puyo, though. Completing the objectives for that was the single hardest thing I've done in this franchise. I also don't like that type of puzzler to begin with, I'm more of a Tetris guy.
 
Well, that was nice. I ran out of fuel on a cargo run in Elite Dangerous, and I was kind of at a loss. So I Googled what to do and found these guys called the Fuel Rats. They had me gassed up and good to go in like 10 minutes. What a nice bunch of fellas.
 
Been playing Littlewood this past week and I just can't put it down.

Picked it up on a whim after hearing it was some kind of Stardew/Story of Season clone but it's actually more of a Dark Cloud-inspired game and man I love me some Dark Cloud and this game does too. Pretty much wears its influence on its sleeves. Even has a card game similar to the card game in FF IX.
 
I've been playing EarthBound for the past few days and I'm trying to make sure this is the time I'll actually finish the game. So far it's going okay but the flaws are driving me a bit nuts. It's mostly the limited inventory space that I can't stand and it doesn't help that equipped items continue to take up slots, along with any key items you might have and you still want to have slots free for items you pick up in the world. Makes it really hard to actually carry around any healing items (I only have a small amount of them and primarily rely on PSI powers for healing/curing status ailments). The Homesickness mechanic is really annoying too since I had to leave the Lilliput Steps cave about 2-3 times cause homesickness decided to kick in and it made the boss fight near-impossible.

I've also been having a third issue that isn't the game's fault. My fucking DualShock 4 is absolutely hellbent on disconnecting itself nearly every 10 seconds, or the controls decide to randomly "stick" or not work outright which makes it really hard to play the game when I'm trying to zip through text boxes in battle only for the controller to flake out. I refuse to let that issue stop me though so hopefully it's fixable. At the very least I know it's either the controller or cable flaking out and not my USB ports.

EarthBound is one of those "flawed but good" games to me. Story and writing are great and most of the basic core mechanics work well enough but the few annoying bits like inventory management hinder my enjoyment somewhat. Doesn't help that there's other RPGs for the SNES that lack these issues or have a similar but slightly easier to deal with issue like Secret of Mana and it's bizarre system which only lets you hold up to 4 of any type of item. I'm also biased as all hell since Chrono Trigger is my favorite game on the SNES...
 
I keep hearing about the Stardew Valley board game, but idk. If I wanted to play it, I think I'd rather play the video game instead.
 
Finished Yakuza 6's main story today... I'll try to keep it brief.

-I found the ending to be needlessly bitter and not sweet enough. After all the shit Kiryu's been through, after spending over a quarter of his life behind bars at this point, after just barely managing to save Haruka and his child... He fakes his own death and disappears from their lives forever? Fucking blah. This would be fine (as unnecessary as it feels) if 6 were just another entry in a continuing saga, but this is the end of the line for Kiryu as a protagonist and I honestly kind of hate how he made things turn out for himself.

-Speaking of things that feel crazy for the end of a saga, I can't believe how hard the recurring cast got sidelined, to the point of being just cameos. I complained about Majima's shitty roles in the PS3 games and he gets even less here, which boggles the mind after how wonderfully they fleshed him out in Zero and even Kiwami. The Florist has been a constant presence in these games since Yakuza 1 and he doesn't even show up. Daigo keeps on being the most useless yakuza chairman for the fourth game in a row. Etcetera. Thank fuck that at least Akiyama got some love. I get that this is supposed to be a very personal, very Kiryu-centric tale, but neglecting all the beloved characters you've been building up for over a decade is not the way to wrap up a story.

-The new supporting cast was generally pretty great actually, and one of the plot's highlights. Unfortunately, the most interesting antagonists and villains got weeded out long before the end (Someya, Big Lo, Kurusu, Hirose, even Han Joon-gi) and we were left with Old Man Frieza and some salaryman-looking ass as Kiryu's final big baddies. Seriously, couldn't they have gotten a cooler guy for the end of Kiryu's journey than some manchild with massive daddy issues?

-The so-called Secret of Onomichi didn't really live up to the hype. The warship itself was irrelevant - only its connection to some bigshot politician on his deathbed (who we've never even seen) made it important. Frankly, I figured way ahead of time that it was going to be something underwhelming, but when so much of the narrative revolves around that secret, it still sucks. Particularly because revealing it made things all the worse for Kiryu and his family, and they gained nothing from it.

-Generally unhappy with how Haruka's character was handled here, especially after how much I liked what they did with her at the end of Y5. I also wish they had taken Kiyomi in a more interesting direction. For example, there was some great chemistry between Kiryu and her at the start which fizzled out extremely quick.

-Typing this last bit also reminded me: anyone remember Sayama Kaoru and how she was totally gonna come back someday after leaving in Y3? Yeahhhhh...

So yeah, lots of complaining and I'm definitely left on a sour note, but I will say I enjoyed my time with the game overall, even if it sounds hard to believe going by everything above. It's just nowhere near what I'd have liked from a final story with so much to live up to.

I should be able to finish all the secondary stuff between tomorrow and the day after, after which I'll take a longer break than usual before tackling Like a Dragon and possibly Judgment. Really excited to see Ichiban and the new gameplay, but at the same time I could use stepping away from the franchise for a bit - especially after Y6 kind of bummed me out, but the break was happening either way.
 
Played and finished Doom Eternal The Ancient Gods Part Two! Felt a bit on the shorter side (which might be because I've gotten really good at Doom Eternal) but if you play it back to back with Part One the length issue isn't too bad. Difficulty isn't nearly as crazy as Part One (take that with a grain of salt cause like I said, I've gotten good at this game) but the optional challenges are certainly up there in difficulty. My only complaint about the levels is that there didn't seem to be very many secrets hidden in them, there's a few here and there but it felt like there was a bit more in Part One. I could be wrong though cause in any case, the main game has far more secrets and such in comparison.

Gameplay is pretty damn fun with the addition of the Sentinel Hammer! I enjoyed the slightly added depth it gave to the combat with it's daze mechanic and that it's really easy to refill (just two glory kills or find a hammer power-up in the world). Other than that it's more Doom Eternal and I like the game a lot so I had a blast with this, gameplay-wise.

I enjoyed the story as well and liked how it wrapped up what they call the "Doom Slayer Saga", but since story is really the least important part of any Doom game even if I hated the story I'd still say get it.
My only complaint about the story is that the final twist is blatantly revealed ahead of time if you're like me and gather and read all the codex pages. It's pretty clear when you reach the final fight with the Dark Lord that the twist revealing that the Dark Lord was essentially God of the Doom Universe and that the Father was a creation of his meant to help him figure out immortality was supposed to be a bit of a wham moment before the final fight. With that said it's not a big deal to me though. If you really think about it the Dark Lord is one MASSIVE idiot though. He manipulated events in the past to create the Doom Slayer in order to get revenge on the Makyrs for betraying him and sealing him away, only to be curbstomped by the Slayer. I was like "Holy shit dude, you really set up all the pieces for your own downfall didn't you?"

That final fight was pretty fun too. It's like dealing with a beefed up Marauder where you have to shoot him when his eyes glow green, smack him with the hammer than shoot the shit out of him. The nasty part is how he actually regenerates health if he hits you with one of his melee attacks so you have to be pretty good at dodging.

I'm not sure how people will feel about the ending, but I liked it quite a bit when I thought about it more and I won't be able to get this exchange out of my head:
Dark Lord: "Do you have any last words to say to your creator?"
Doomguy: *takes helmet off and stabs Dark Lord* "...No."

Epic shit when this is the first and probably last line Doomguy will actually speak outside of flashbacks. It's the part after that I think will have some mixed reactions though. Killing the Dark Lord kills all the demon's outside of hell, but then Doomguy falls to the ground since in a manner of speaking he was also a creation of the Dark Lord (something that the Father points out to him while this is happening). He's then sealed away in a sarcophagus like the one he woke up in at the beginning of Doom 2016 and the game ends with the same Corrax quote we saw in the beginning of that game as well. At first I was like "WHAT? NO!" when that happened but when I thought about it it made more sense. When you think about it, in Doom 2016 it's stated that he "chose the path of perpetual torment" and even though he's effectively killed all demons outside of Hell, that probably hasn't changed that. On top of that, I'm pretty sure Doomguy isn't dead but only sealed away for now. If Doomguy was really dead I don't think we would have seen him getting put in the sarcophagus from a first person perspective and it would be much more obvious. Unless the devs confirm he's actually dead I'm pretty sure he'll just be sitting in there until something requires him to be unsealed.

As for where they could take the story next, there's a few options but I'm not sure what they'll use. We could either get something that shows what happened in-between Doom 2016 and Eternal or possibly even something about Doomguy's time with the Night Sentinels (especially Taras Nabad and his fight against the Titan there). Since all demons outside of Hell are dead now it feels like there's not much room to work with, but I'm sure they'll be able to keep the franchise going. I know I'd definitely love to keep playing more Doom games.
As for my thoughts on the Doom Slayer Saga as a whole (Doom 2016 along with Doom Eternal and it's DLC) this was one hell of a ride (no pun intended) and as someone who's been a Doom fan ever since I started playing games when I was a small child this was everything I hoped it would be and then some. Doom 2016 surprised me with how much it stayed true to most aspects of classic Doom and I wound up loving Doom Eternal for it's crazy gameplay loop and brutal difficulty.

...At some point I want to do a whole Doom Slayer Saga playthrough. I haven't played Doom 2016 since Eternal came out!
 
It's finally happening. More than a year after buying it, I have fallen into the utter abyss that is Persona 5 Royal. Today I played it for 5 entire hours. What the hell is happening to me.

Soon I'll be talking to girls irl to get my social links up, and reading in public to increase my charm, as well as changing the peoples hearts of people that I don't like. I am a phantom theaves.
 
Played through the first Nioh again as an onmyo mage with dual blades and now trying a pure spear/axe warrior build without relying on any magic or ninjutsu. Thankfully being a warrior in this is just as satisfying as the more specialized classes, the added defense and extra damage output sure help a lot.

Compared to Nioh 2 the first one is pretty much a cakewalk now meaning no dark realm, no burst counter, no extra KI shenanigans and none of the more annoying yokai enemies like Nure-Onna or Ippon-Datara.
 
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Made a bit more progress in Earthbound. Managed to finish the 5th sanctuary and got the broken bazooka but Jeff can't fix it yet so it'll sit in the inventory for a while. Surprisingly I'm not doing too bad with inventory management now. It's still a crappy inventory system but I'm finding that a lot of dungeons don't really have tons and tons of loot in them and a good portion of it I just sell immediately cause a lot of it is useless crap. Looks like the next thing I need to do is get into the Stoic Club so that's where I'll be starting tomorrow!

Moonside might be my favorite area in the game too. It's vaguely like some weird Twin Peaks-esque stuff (maybe Itoi was a Twin Peaks fan?)
 
Went back to Blasphemous to beat the five DLC bosses. Pretty cool fights, but honestly, I feel like the prayer skill I use (grants invencibility for a few seconds) is way overpowered and kind of makes these battles a cakewalk. Even without it, though, you can tell the DLC bosses deal a lot less damage than the base game bosses in NG+, which is kind of weird really. I also wish the reward was better - as far as I can tell it's just a new Sword Heart with a very awful negative effect (halves defense) so it's not like I'd even use it because its positive effect hardly seems worth it compared to that.

Regardless, it was a nice excuse to jump back into a damn cool game for a bit. Maybe someday I'll return to do the Penitence runs, which all sound like pretty interesting challenges.
 
Ok, so I definitely still do not enjoy the fights against two bosses in Nioh, never beat one of those missions either. Hanzo/Okatsu is the most difficult imo but it hardly matters, they're all nightmares. A staple in Team Ninja games so I guess they have their place but personally I can't stand them.
 
Had like $350 left from my stimulus check. And blew through $160 of it grabbing some games I've been wanting.

Avengers.
They Are Billions
Tales From The Borderlands (Which means I can finally beat Borderlands 3 later)
Space Hulk Deathwing
Dark Pictures: Little Hope.

I am set.
 
Finished Earthbound!

Turned out nearly all of the healing items I got weren't really needed at all. More often than not I was able to get through most areas while just relying on PSI powers to heal and it helped that I was probably a bit overleveled (Ness was in the 80s range while everyone else was a bit below that). Ness in particular has so much PP by the end that there's no trouble casting the highest healing abilities as long as you don't use the PP on other moves. Difficulty-wise the last parts of the game were pretty easy other than the Diamond Dog boss fight with it's shitloads of HP and the "Ghost of Starman" enemies that will completely destroy you in one turn if you either don't have PSI shields up or heal fast enough. I'd even go as far as to say Giygas is the easiest boss in the game if you know what to do (and who doesn't these days?). The very first phase is the only one that's even slightly challenging since you're going to want enough PP to use your strongest freeze attacks on Pokey and a a few more freeze attacks on Giygas himself once the actual first phase of the final fight starts. After that, it's surprisingly easy especially if Paula has the right gear on. The atmosphere is really what makes that fight anyway.

What I really want to know is how the heck did that final boss get past the censors at Nintendo of America at the time??? How did they look at that final fight and it's dialogue and go "yeah nothing wrong here!" I have no issue with the fight to be clear but 90s Nintendo was pretty notorious for keeping things "kid-friendly". With that said iirc they started to relax their guidelines around the mid-90s when the game was released (and after Mortal Kombat 2 was released uncensored on the SNES) so maybe that's why they didn't mind as much.

Good game and worth playing, but the inventory system makes things much more annoying than they need to be.
 
all the games i used to love playing as a kid are boring now. this sucks.

the games in question are Risk II, Red Alert 2, and Heroes of Might and Magic III.

Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit is still fun though. in fact it's more fun than it used to be cos i'm a hell of a lot better at it than i was as a kid.

maybe i should try again to play the actual campaign of Mental Omega. though i'll probably just give up halfway through the first mission again...
 
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Started playing Mother 3 last night. I know it takes quite a bit for the game to actually open up so I don't have too much to say just yet. Thankfully some aspects of the game are improved over Earthbound (there's a separate inventory for key items now, thank fuck) but I'm already once again having inventory management trouble. At the very least I don't have to worry about walking all the way back to a shop and I can just throw away old equipment because Chapter 1 doesn't seem to have any shops or even any money, but due to Flint's lack of PSI powers it becomes practically necessary to hoard healing items and the inventory fills up quick with that stuff.

The combo system at least stands out but it can be really tricky to use since some songs in battles actually seem to change their beat partway through. At least the readme for the english translation patch says that combos aren't really needed to get through the game so hopefully I won't have to worry too much.

Soundtrack and story along with the graphics are great though. Forgot how much
Hinawa's death
hits like a truck...
 
Vega said:
The combo system at least stands out but it can be really tricky to use since some songs in battles actually seem to change their beat partway through. At least the readme for the english translation patch says that combos aren't really needed to get through the game so hopefully I won't have to worry too much.
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Ye, you can definitely beat the game without paying attention to them. Wasn't until I was on the second to last boss that my gf mentioned the combo system to me which was a major "welp" moment. Do indeed give some nice bonus damage though when you land them
 
Grach said:
Ye, you can definitely beat the game without paying attention to them. Wasn't until I was on the second to last boss that my gf mentioned the combo system to me which was a major "welp" moment. Do indeed give some nice bonus damage though when you land them
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Yeah, they're nice to have since sometimes they make it possible to kill an enemy in one round but the amount of damage on each combo hit seems really small at least in these early parts of the game. At the very least I'm starting to get the hang of things so I haven't had too much trouble with the combos now!

On another note part of me really wants to replay Mother 1/Earthbound Beginnings again but that encounter rate would be painful to deal with... xD (and part of me wants to do it without the "easy" patch this time)
 
Probably says something about my current mindset when I'm eagerly awaiting 9 indie games to come out of Early Access and 27 more to be released yet I completely forgot Final Fantasy XVI was announced last year.
 
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