(Archived 2022) The thread in which we talk about games we are currently playing

2501

soapbox Yeah see the thing is I’m kind of atrocious at bullet hell shooters, my ability to track a large number of small moving objects simultaneously and react with split-second hand eye coordination is… not good. I can handle (and in fact enjoy) high difficulty on 3D shooters and brawlers but bullet hell games just mulch me. I had to put Ikaruga on infinite lives and easy mode to beat it, etc.

Anyway I’ll probably restart on normal and keep playing like that til I get the hang of the mechanics + it really starts to become boring, which probably won’t be long. I read that this game doesn’t tie any sort of bonus or achievements to difficulty level so this shouldn’t mess anything up right?

2501

In fact come to think of it it seems pretty much a blanket truth that I’m good/competent at 3D games with high difficulty but generally suck at 2D games with high difficulty. Wonder if that’s like a visual processing thing or just that I tend to find 3D more immersive and thus easier to focus on, or that analog movement is more intuitive to me than digital… hmmm

rootfifthoctave

2501 come to think of it it seems pretty much a blanket truth that I’m good/competent at 3D games with high difficulty but generally suck at 2D games with high difficulty

i feel this!

Chopemon I subscribed to the highest level of playstation plus because I am desperate for a Japanese arcade racer on my PS5 and Ridge Racer 2 came out today. I have multiple other devices to play that game on but I specifically want a racer on PS5

i feel this as well!!!! i’ve been playing those psp ridge racers on my pstv and, in terms of feel/soundtrack/course selection they are pretty sublime. better, i think, than RR7 on ps3, though i haven’t played that for a good while.

phylaxis

turns out judgement is really good!!!!
i tore thru all the of mainline yakuza games in the past couple years (especially during that first year of lockdown) and kept putting off playing those Judge Eyeses and wow, it might be in my top 3 or 4 RGG games

saddleblasters

phylaxis yeah, i liked the two judgements more than the yakuzas i played, though i think it’s entirely just me liking/relating to yagami more than kiryu. @exodus keeps talking about how much worse judgement is than mainline yakuza!

Fuck Trevor

phylaxis Was jumping between Judgment and Like A Dragon for a bit a few months ago and I was really liking what I was playing of Judgment. Need to get back to it at some point, I’d always get a chuckle when Kaito would call Yagami and his face would be so close to the camera

Chopemon

I subscribed to the highest level of playstation plus because I am desperate for a Japanese arcade racer on my PS5 and Ridge Racer 2 came out today. I have multiple other devices to play that game on but I specifically want a racer on PS5 because it is a good 5 minute game between other games or at the end of the night. It was £11 to get the highest tier until March. I don’t think I’ll keep that tier as there aren’t enough games that fit my taste on there.

ANYWAY, the PSP onwards Ridge Racers are just like pure bliss to me. I love the handling, I love the tracks, I love the aesthetic, I love low poly art with photo textures. I completely zone out with those games. Pure enjoyment and relaxation.

They really should make a new one or rerelease existing ones but not locked behind a subscription service. Wonderful games that help me when I’m having a bad head time.

Chopemon

rootfifthoctave I do prefer the PSP games to 7 but the menu style of 6 and the overall feel it gives it is really top class. God, Namco, just put these games out!

phylaxis

saddleblasters there are for sure a couple or few mainline yakuzas that i think are worse than judgement! it’s topper shelf than most of em if you ask me

saddleblasters

Fuck Trevor and his face would be so close to the camera

yes that is why Yagami is such a great character. he is cool, but in a “your uncle who who was in a rock band but doesn’t know how to use computers” way, rather than, like, Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. I found his sidequest scenarios a lot more interesting than Kiryu’s in mainline Yakuza (not that those aren’t interesting). With Kiryu he is so clearly fish out of water most of the time that the jokes write themselves – whereas with Yagami he is for the most part A Normal Person, so when he reveals something weird about himself you’re like “whoa, that’s weird.” I mean, there is definitely some of that with Kiryu (Kiryu is a fantastic protagonist), I just found more of Yagami’s stuff to be memorable.

Gaagaagiins

Kiryu, at least in the games I’ve played, is less like a believable person and more like a folk hero. He’s always that lovable, surprisingly open-minded, justice centric, and generous straight man, and predictably so–which can be both good and just serviceable (of course I love him so much I can’t even say rhetorically that it’s both good and bad). In a pinch especially in side stories he can even take a back seat and act as an audience surrogate (which is a different thing from him being the player character) to let some other more wacky character chew some scenery around him.

phylaxis

that’s such a good point that I didn’t quite pin down until seeing you all mention it, like… kiryu is a character in a story, but Yagami is a person with a story. I love em both but they do different things

I also feel like, even though kiryu has lived am kamurocho for like 40 years, Yagami seems to have way more interpersonal relationships with other people in the town and feels more lived in as someone to step into as the player. kiryu’s whole life as a yakuza guy who, by the way he lives, is going to by necessity have many more barriers up and and be more distant to the place he lives in but like… I dunno, Yagami is a great change of pace from that! (ichiban is cool too but somewhere in the middle, what with him being chucked into Yokohama not knowing anyone)

I dunno, I like these guys! the whole thing is Melodrama Soap Opera For Boys which should extremely not be my thing but it is very my thing!!

beets

2501
I’ve played through Nier Automata multiple times only on Normal Difficulty. I don’t think it’s meant to be a difficult game. I’ve tried Hard Difficulty a few times, I’ve never made it past the tutorial boss fight, if there was a save point in there I probably would go on.

I really like the Auto Lock on, partly because I am awful at FPS’s and it makes it easy to deal with flying enemies but I think it also adds an extreme viscerality to the bossfights, being 2 feet away while blasting a machine gun and swinging two massive sword feels good. Maybe it’s a power fantasy enjoyment, the characters are near perfect androids fighting crude cartoon like robots, it makes sense if they’re stronger. There are some points later on where you become pretty over-powered, but there are some side quests which are awful unless you are over-powered too (the parade one).

With normal difficulty you’re probably never going to get a game over, especially once you’ve learnt the mechanics. I guess it’s what you want out of the game. I went in for the story after knowing Nier, but never playing it, which is probably why I was satisfied with an easier game.

Writing about this has got me thinking about the chip system. Gosh! I really like that chip system.

tomjonjon

Chopemon There should be a Ridge Racer collection. Just bundle up the arcade games and the PSX games with a bit of museum/history stuff. I’d buy it at a high price.

seasons

rootfifthoctave playing phantasy star 4 too. My first time with any single player ps. Having a pleasant time. I’m a bit past zio’s tower and still don’t know what most of the spells and skills do

Chopemon

According to a Resetera user, all of the subscription only games on PS plus have a year’s exclusivity on them. Apparently on the PS store backend, there is a £15.99 version of Ridge Racer 2 but it is blocked because it is set to be part of PS Plus. So On Dec 20th 2023, we MIGHT be able to pay £15.99 for an emulated PSP game with some graphical issues if Sony allows us to.

The graphical issues come from the 2D UI art being scaled up and having some rogue pixels on the edges of the layers in the source files. The 3D stuff is fine.

sabertoothalex

Played a few hours of Dragon Age: Origins and am feeling pretty into it so far. It has an almost Witcher 1 type feel to the world, the way characters move, the pace of dialogue. Hoping for the best because rarely do BioWare games actually stick for me.

Is anyone here a fan of this series? I know Inquisition was pretty popular.

yeso

dragon age 2 is stunningly bad. You should check it out. I thought Inquisition was bad as well, but 2 is a real oddball game

sabertoothalex

yeso I’m honestly super down for a uniquely bad game. BioWare games usually seem kinda bad to me in safe and boring ways so sounds cool

Salloumi

2501 ….aaaaaand you’ve pushed me over the edge. Got a copy coming on eBay. This sort of thing is, to me, more of a visual novel than a Visual Novel is.

2501

Salloumi It’s worth mentioning that the story is slightly easier to follow if you’ve already played Ogre Battle for the SNES, which is an excellent game in its own right!

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