The Video Game Forum discussion
What have you been playing: before the forum was deleted?
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For me over the weekend I finished out the first series of Forza Motorsport. I think all series would take me a good 60+ hours to complete so not sure when that will happen. Maybe I'l play another one or two series more but not until next year now what with the new release season here. Also played a few more games on Darktide and it looks like I have played all maps now. So I'll likely call it a day on Darktide - but a cracking fun game. I enjoyed it with randoms - seems very popular, never had a problem finding a game. It's longevity though I think comes from playing with mates and it's not on PS5 (yet). Next for me is MW3 campaign next weekend and of course the multiplayer for a few weeks after that. Then AC Mirage and possibly AW2 at christmas. I've also got to fit in Callisto Protocol and the Dead Space remake. So plenty for me lined up over the next couple of months. I'm expecting Stalker 2 won't be out soon and Spacemarine 2 I guess will be another game I'll be playing at somepoint, maybe even this Christmas (it's out soonish but I don't think it has a release date yet).
I hope that Space Marine 2 game comes out this year but I think we'd have a release date by now if it was.I started The Foundation DLC for Control over the weekend. It's good stuff and I think I'm getting towards the end of the missions now. Will need to mop up collectibles although this doesn't look too bad as the area is fairly compact and there are a lot of fast travel points.
Polished off Alan Wake 2 there and it's pretty much what you expect from Remedy - lots of good stuff, with a few minor irritations. Can't see too many fans being too disappointed by it. kind of glad i didnt plat in one playthough it's one, I'll happily replay it at some point to mop up the last few trophies
Gave WRC a quick go this morning, with its weird "release date 3rd November but everyone who buys it can play 3 days early". Most of the trophies look fine but the regulation rally and club ones look a bit of a pain. To join or create a club they want you to scan in a code and do it on the EA website...no thanks. The one regulation rally (or whatever its called) that I tried just wasn't a lot of fun. Pace too high, you get a penalty, pace too low, you get a penalty, so getting 0 penalty points looks like a pain.
Regularity rally not regulation
A rally where you get punished for driving too fast? That doesn't sound good.Just read a review for that new Robocop game and it sounds a lot of fun. More polished than Terminator Resistance.
I'd buy that for a dollar! Or sub £20 when it drops in price.
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It is good but not to the point its price shouldn't have dropped to sub £20 or even £15. Its a strange one.
Looks like I misunderstood the regularity rally (shocking!). Say a stage is split into 4 sections, they want you to hit a time target exactly, and if you are too quick or too slow you get penalty points based on how far you were over/under. Getting the time exactly still sounds like a pain
A week or two ago, I was looking forward to the new WRC. Now I'm not sure it's what I'm in the mood for. Not a lot wrong with it, a few frame rate issues but nothing major. I blame Alan Wake 2, since I had a blast playing it, whatever came next was always likely to struggle
Robocop's trophy difficulty is 3/10 with no missable trophies.
Tempting...though partly because WRC has crashed three times in half an hour on the post rally results screen. Still, I'll wait till Robocop hits the £20 mark, £25 max
I was half tempted to pick up the new WRC game depending on how much my real car costs me getting it through it's MOT (it won't be cheap this year). However it sounds a bit poor from what you've said so may look at something else.The only crashes that should happen in a rally game are where you drive off the road ;)
Played a bit more Control last night. Finished all The Foundation missions and found the hidden locations.
To be fair to WRC, game crashes and occasional framerate jumps aside, it's no worse than the previous developers efforts. Wouldn't really say it's much better either though. Nice to rally on some different tracks though.
Given its a Codemasters game with all EA's finances behind it, I'd really expect it to be a step up from the games before it made by a AA developer. I'll definitely get to it but happy to wait for a few patches and a price drop happen first. That pretty much sums up gaming these days I suppose.
Equinox80 wrote: "Given its a Codemasters game with all EA's finances behind it, I'd really expect it to be a step up from the games before it made by a AA developer. I'll definitely get to it but happy to wait for ..."I think after a few patches it should be absolutely mint - all the reviews are really very positive but it just seems to have launched in a slightly fragile state (especially on PC).
It has the looks and it is a solid drive but there's definitely room for improvement, for me at least.Expectation could be a part of it. I do like Codemasters, can't remember the last game they've released that I haven't enjoyed, so probably expected a little more. I enjoyed the last few WRC games by Nacon/KT Racing (or whatever they're called) at least as much, if not more.
And I'm still waiting for the truly realistic rally game, where if you hit a spectator, the event is cancelled and you spend the rest of the game waiting for your manslaughter trial. WRC plays it safe and just gives you the arbitrary 5 second penalty instead ;)
You'll have to stick to Carmeggedon I think mate ;)
Won the WRC Championship then went to try and mop up a few of the smaller trophies. There's one to get 5 gold in the Moments mode, and yes, there are 5 events... but one of them is locked behind EA Play subscription, so would have to wait until the list refreshes. A lot of small things like that make it harder to rate highly
OK got it wrong (again). It looks like more Moments races unlock as you complete them. I reckon I should probably leave this one a few weeks. and play when I'm more in the mood
Hey Deck, I had a quick look at your trophy list yesterday (I was very bored).I noticed you haven't finished Astros Playroom, the free game that comes installed on PS5.
I think its actually illegal for a PS5 owner to have not only played this but not platted it either ;) Outrageous stuff.
In other outrageous trophy related news, the PS5 version of COD MW3 doesn't have a platinum trophy and the campaign trophies are instead MW2 DLC trophies.The PS4 version does have a plat though.
What on earth were they thinking?
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Yea I really don’t like MW3 being DLC of MW2. The UI is such a confusing mess. I’ve downloaded the campaign - again confusing to work out what I needed to do as it doesn’t look automatic as you have to go into manage files. I plan to start the campaign tonight.
I was half/quarter tempted by MW3 to play alongside WRC but have come to my senses now ;) Instead of looking at the store, I should maybe look at what I have first. I don't think I'm in the mood for Astro's Playroom though. Scared I might find Wayne or Ness in there ;)
I'm very close to cracking on buying Robocop. I know it'll be one I'll appreciate more when it's cheaper but....
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Got a foot of snow a week ago. Now that I'm firmly in winter's grasp I think it's time for a lengthy RPG. Considering going back to the original Red Dead Redemption. Anyone care to throw out ideas for a nice RPG to play while wearing mittens and a scarf? Underrated/little known favorites?
Can't say anything is really sticking out for decent but obscure rpgs. I made a start on Star Ocean The Second Story and like what they've done with it, but wouldn't really recommend unless you played it originally - the combat can feel very button-bashy. The 2 Pathfinder games are decent, but they both have game mechanics that get in their own way a bit. Disco Elysium is one I keep meaning to go back to, it seemed promising. More actiony type rpgs, really can't think of any of note
Lies of P is a very decent souls clone, Wild Hearts does Monster Hunter better than Monster Hunter, Midnight Suns I enjoyed. Not exactly obscure though. My recommendation - just buy Alan Wake 2 instead ;)
I would absolutely buy Alan Wake 2 this instant if it wasn't against everything I stand for to buy a new game at full price (From Soft excluded).
Finally finished The Foundation DLC for Control. Getting the collectibles wasn't as bad as I way expecting. I was only missing 9/43 and they were easily mopped up with an excellent guide.Will probably move onto the Alan Wake crossover AWE expansion next. I was going to have a break and play something else but may as well crack straight on whilst the games mechanics are fresh in my head.
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Maybe that's why, trophy wise, it's only counted as DLC. Because its so short ;)It's a shame as the campaign for the 2019 reboot was really good. Never played MW2 though.
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Spent most of the weekend on Star Ocean : The Second Story and like what they've done with it. About 2/3 of the way through and the combat is becoming as much of a chore as I remember from back on the PS1, though will say a bit of that's my own doing. Don't think it'll be one I plat immediately, not sure I'd fancy a second playthrough straight after.
Played more Control and the AWE DLC. I think if they'd not introduced difficulty sliders I'd have binned this off. I'm enjoying it but some of the boss areas are insane as your health is being constantly eroded, it's difficult to see anything or what you're supposed to do and a big massive 'thing' floats around, grabbing you and sucking even more health from you.I think I'm getting towards the of it and next I think I'm off to a 'Bright Falls' area of the map.
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I lowered the difficulty on some situations and a couple of bosses in Control cause i felt it was really unbalaced at time.
No shame in that.
Still playing and enjoying The Evil Within 2.
I may end up getting Alan Wake 2 after completing TEW2 since im in the right mood.
I thought they'd got a decent balance for difficulty in Control - challenging but not unfair. Like a few of their other games though, it was more some of the environments causing the problems than the bosses themselves. That said, I did knock the difficulty down for the PS5 version but managed the PS4 plat before they added the sliders
Yeah I played the Control base game before there were any difficulty options and nearly threw the towel in at a couple of spots.I'm hoping for a new PS store sale tomorrow and something inspirational to haw. I'm assuming it'll be the Black Friday sale so hopefully a few tempting offers.
That end boss of the AWE DLC was insanely difficult. I didn't adjust the difficulty but I was extremely relieved when I finally beat it. Some of the other bosses were also a bit much but nothing like AWE.I followed through with my plan to play some Red Dead Redemption. I still have a physical copy of the ultimate edition. Unfortunately, I could not track down disc one so I ended up playing Undead Nightmare all weekend. Still pretty great but my goodness is the movement (especially on horseback) just miserable and frustrating. So easy to get caught up on the environment or careen down a ravine or somehow end in a puddle of water and instantly die.
Ping! Dead Space Remake.Impossible mode is 1 save slot and perma death if you die - although the death animations are quite long and as long as you quit back to the main menu before the animation has finished then you're ok. Nearly died myself in real life last night when I got the flatline beeeeeeeeeep after stupidly getting insta-killed by a spinning fan during the last level, but just about managed to quit to the main menu quick enough!
I only started my impossible run about a week ago and thought it'd take me nicely pretty much to the end of the year, an hour of intensity here and there between other stuff, but I got completely sucked in and rattled it off fairly quick. took about 14-15 hours, no extra backtracking or attention given to sidequests either, and that's compared to about 6-7 hours on an easy run a few months ago which did include loads of backtracking to sweep up collectibles etc!
Dead Space was my first plat on the ps3, and now it's remake 14/15 years later is my latest. Plat 23 in total.
Phil, psn: p4tiny wrote: "Ping! Dead Space Remake.Impossible mode is 1 save slot and perma death if you die - although the death animations are quite long and as long as you quit back to the main menu before the animation..."
And then I had a mini panic that my ps5 had developed a glitch during the 'preparing to turn off your ps5' animation because rather than showing the top third of the ps5 on that screen it was just showing the pulsing white lights and some particle effects - i.e. no ps5 centre section and no white side plates...
I switched on and off multiple times, did a database rebuild, literally everything else was fine, just this glitchy animation when shutting down...eventually researched and it turns out Sony have released a stealth update in anticipation of the release of the 'slim' to make the animation universal to both the OG and new shape ps5.
Breathed a big sigh of relief that my ps5 isn't slowly breaking!
Congrats Phil, thats a really impressive one to get (twice).Will keep an eye on my PS5 when turning it off. Stuff like that is horrible, that moment of panic when you think something terrible has happened.
No Black Friday sale starting today, next week instead.Will give me time to clear a few games out and deleted off my SSD.
Control at 100% after polishing off the AWE trophies. The vending machines trophy was a bit of a pain getting the spawns.
Finished off the Star Ocean 2 story, and decided to go back to the Alan Wake remaster, since im still in the mood for more Remedy after AW2.Went through the first chapter, then decided to have a few rallies in WRC...the previous 20 odd hours in WRC, I'd had rain, snow etc but very few at night. After playing Alan Wake remaster, the first 6 or 7 stages were all in various degrees of darkness. Bit of a weird coincidence (but made sure to avoid damaging the headlights just in case ;) )
Should be platting WRC later, just a few distance related trophies left. Nothing too difficult overall, the moments mode is probably the toughest. Kind of mode you can't really afford to make a mistake and still drive at a decent pace. Still, found enough of them that were doable.
Haven't found the enemies to be bullet spongey (i am playing on story difficulty though), it's much like the first game, where your torch is probably the more important item. Ive not found ammo to be too scarce either, not a lot of it, but you tend to only run out of ammo for one of your weapons, only once have I had none at all.
Trophy wise it's not bad. There's a couple of missable items, but nothing difficult. I've missed one so will have to replay at some point, but I'm fine with that, it's one I'll happily replay.