The only question I have is what’s gonna happen as game discs are just becoming an access token to download the game and its updates.
That’s a big concern. There’s communities trying to document which games are complete on the media and can be played from start to end without updates (so no major game-breaking bugs or huge performance issues) like this one:
Either saving on media costs (25GB disc instead of 100GB disc, maybe 1 disc instead of 2 if the game is too big), or even having more time to work on the game.
Developer makes sure the early stages are properly tested, send the disc for manufacturing including only those, use the manufacturing time to tweak/bugfix/optimize more stuff the rest of the game.
I haven’t heard of any disc game not being able to be played.
There’s a number of games that don’t come with the whole thing on disk/cart, usually including only the early stages and the rest needs to be downloaded.
There’s also the problem that they’re clearly rushing this without much thought, they don’t even have an answer to the obvious question of “what happens to people in regions not supported by PSN”.
Not surprisingly that PSN page was edited earlier today, but there’s a million screenshots floating around already, plus you can check the previous version in the Wayback Machine.
And even if it was clearly written on all places, it’s still a “too bad you didn’t read the fine print, now you’re past the limit time for a refund, so either let Sony track you or lose access to the game” situation which is very shitty. There’s also the fact that they sold the game to people in countries where is PSN is not available, which should not have happened if that requirement was going to be enforced in the future.
Not hard to see why people would get pissed and lose trust in the developer. I also think that players have been annoyed for a while with this type of requirement (not specifically in this game), and they are now getting a good outlet with a lot of publicity around to vent about it.
Playing Kingdom Come Deliverance. Tried fighting a few people / bandits, but they just kill me so easily, apparently I have to take it slow, and do other stuff to get strong (or I can just rush the main quest which is easier, but I don’t to do that)....
I like that Ori tried to experiment with the save/load system, but I feel that the whole “save anywhere as long as you have energy” thing ended up being worse than traditional checkpoints in that game.
The second game drops a lot of the experimental things from the first game in favor of things you usually expect in this genre. Loses some originality but it’s a more solid game IMO.
Slow progress, currenty going through chapter 5. As I predicted last week there’s some trouble brewing with the cute AI girl, though they started earlier than I expected. Let’s see how things develop from here on.
This is definitely a Ubisoft game, ran into a bug that forced me to close+reopen the game only a few hours in - I accidentally “skipped” a boss because it glitched and threw me past a closed door into the next area 😅, but luckily it didn’t autosave so I just had to replay a that particular section. I also ran into a few more smaller gliches, nothing gamebreaking but definitely annoying when I’m coming from bug-free experiences in similar games from small developers.
As for the game, it’s pretty good! Nice exploration, plataforming is fantastic, and I’m enjoying the puzzles. Not a big fan of the combat system, but it’s more a matter of preferences than a problem with the game, it has a lot of focus on the parrying mechanic which is not something I enjoy.
Could definitely use more fast travel and save spots, though at least you don’t lose anything when you die, you go back to the last checkpoint keeping everything including the map and collectibles you may have picked up. One really neat QOL feature is the ability to take screenshots and attach them to the map, makes it easier for you to remember “why didn’t I go this path” or “which powerup did I need to go that direction”.
I commented about the first game on my previous post, and while I did have a good time with it there were some pretty annoying flaws as well.
The second game fixes most of my complaints - platforming feels better, plus you get some of the relevant movement skills earlier which also helps improve the experience when exploring. Combat is pretty decent this time, and the game also includes plenty of customization with a lot of attack and passive skills for you to choose from.
I get that this comes at a cost of the game feeling a bit less “unique”, but I’m definitely having more fun with one.
Finished Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs. The last few bosses were pretty time taking, they had huge amount of health and took waaaaaaay too long to beat....
Comments on the first game on this post from a couple weeks ago, and early impressions of the second game here.
Overall a big improvement on the first game and one I can more easily recommend to others.
However, I think the praise both games get is excessive. Don’t get me wrong, they’re good games with beautiful art, fantastic OST, really cool world and exploration. But IMO they also have some significant flaws including plenty of cheap deaths, frustrating platforming sequences with a lot a of trial-and-error, hard-to-see hitboxes, and subpar platforming controls on the first game.
Same developer as Touhou Luna Nights, and I’ve enjoyed it almost as much. This one is a lot easier and beginner-friendly (maybe even to its detriment), but the smooth controls and exploration make so, so fun to play.
These two games definitely made me a fan of Team Ladybug, they have another game called “Drainus” which is now high in my wishlist, and I’ll keep an eye for new releases from them.
Finished Ori and the Blind Forest. It’s a really good game, very polished, visuals and sound are great, but some part of design feels a bit dated, or well they require very twitchy reflexes. Other than that though, loved the game. Highly recommended for any metroidvania fans....
Quite impressed with this one, a really nice metroidvania from Ubisoft. The platforming controls are superb, the abilites you unlock make it even more fun over time, and the combat is solid.
Definitely not a game for casual players (unless you don’t mind turning on assists), there’s some tricky plataforming sections and nasty difficulty spikes in some bosses, but the main complaint I have about the game is the limited amount of fast travel spots, the map is HUGE and backtracking can be a pain in the ass. Other than that and a few minor bugs I don’t have many bad things to say about this one, definitely play it if you like the genre.
Minor bonus for Switch players: Looks like this version is the only one that does not require an Ubisoft account, it’s going to ask for it when you open the game but you can just press a button to skip.
There’s been more opportunities for coop play with friends recently, so I decided to pick this one. However, I could not wait and already did a quick single-player run through story mode using Blaze.
Really fun old-school beat’em up, I recommend it for fans of the genre.
Almost exactly an year ago I finished Planetarian, a classic visual novel that was also the first game from the “Kinectic Novel” series - a Visual Arts brand for VNs without any choices or branches in the storyline, more akin to a visual book than a game.
So I thought it was appropriate to celebrate this anniversary by playing Lunaria, another Kinetic Novel from the same studio (Key, of Clannad fame) that I had just received in the mail.
One of the things that drew me to both these games is that I’m a huge sci-fi fan, and both deal with interactions between AIs and humans. However, they take very different approaches to this theme - Planetarian is bittersweet story focused on the contrast between the post-apocalyptic present and the small glimpse of a better past the MC encounters, while Lunaria is a much brigher slice-of-life story with focus on VR and e-sports.
The plot so far is the typical “boy meets cute (AI) girl, romance starts to develop between them”, but this being a Key game I’m already expecting something tragic to happen in the latter parts of the story - there’s already some hints of a bigger plot around the AI girl’s origins and circumstances.
Finished Azure Striker Gunvolt, but since it ended in a cliff hanger, started (and finished) Azure Stricker Gunvolt 2 (both comes in same bundle). The second game is very similar to the first one, but with some more powers, another playable character, and QoL features....
Another old-school beat’em up I picked up alongside SOR4, and another great one. Kinda easy compared to other games in the genre, but I still had a lot of fun and it’s going to be a good option to play with more casual friends.
Did a single-player run and will play again in coop when opportunity appears.
This game’s biggest weakness is it’s first half - it starts as a fairly generic romance story between a brooding boy and a happy girl, with only a little sci-fi and action mixed in to spice things up. The e-sports segments were definitely my favorite parts in this half of the game.
However, once I reached the second half and the main plot started rolling I could not stop reading. It went in a very different direction from what I expected, and the main twist hit me hard and got me fully invested in the story.
Overall a good and short kinetic novel, but don’t go into this expecting a lot of focus on sci-fi - that element of the story is mostly a backdrop for the romance and action.
Finally being able to get the 5th and 6th games physically in english was a nice motivation for me to pick up this bundle, and I decided to go straight for the last game, since it’s the only Ace Attorney game available in english I had never finished.
So far I finished the first case, the new “Divination” is a nice twist on the previous formula. From the looks of the second case we’ll be going back and forth between cases with Phoenix using this new mechanic and more traditional case Apollo/Athena, sounds like a good way to keep things interesting.
I know almost nothing about the Touhou universe, but even without knowing the characters I had a ton of fun with this game.
Combat is fantastic, and it’s challenging without being too frustrating. Exploration is a bit too linear, but overall I really appreciate seeing a recent metroidvania game that is not just following the formula set by Hollow Knight. The only bad I thing I can say is that the the game is really short, there’s no in-game timer but it definitely took me less than 10h to get 100% completion.
There’s a lot of good things and a lot of bad things going on on this one.
Production values are great, the world is very interesting, some stages are quite unique, and most puzzles are well designed. On the other hand, for a game with a lot of focus on platforming the controls don’t feel quite right - they’re kinda floaty and weird, it’s easy to miss platforms when jumping (or even more strange, when climbing them from the side), wall jump sometimes doesn’t grab and you’re not quite sure it didn’t work… Maybe I’ve been spoiled by games like Mario or Celeste, but I sometimes get an impression that I’m fighting against the controls in this one.
Combat is underwhelming, but that’s not really the focus on that game. Also, you’re going to die A LOT, and even with the mechanic that lets you save almost anywhere this can get annoying.
So after hearing a billion people commenting about this game I picked it up, and I can confirm it’s as fun and addictive as advertised. Not that hard as far roguelikes go, I had my first win somewhere around 3h of playtime and managed a few more already.
I’m bored with this game but I still want to finish it, so I’ll playing it slowly and sparsely. Not sure how long it’ll take, and probably won’t mention in future posts unless I hit some relevant landmark.
Added Touhou Luna Nights to my wishlist, I am leaning towards shorter games these days, so 10 hours to 100% sounds really good to me.
It’s a fantastic game, my second favorite in this genre in recent years after Axiom Verge. Worth mentioning that it can be quite hard at times, in particular at bosses, but I feel it gives you more than enough tools to learn their patterns and beat them.
The protagonist’s time-manipulation power is really neat, you have the ability to slow or even stop time for short periods which is handy when you’re stuck on “OK, so how the hell do I dodge this attack”. There’s also a “grazing” mechanic that lets you recover HP by getting close to the enemy or their bullets, which you can use to recover mid-battle if there’s a particular attack pattern you can’t dodge perfectly.
Didn’t expect to hear bad things about Ori, I haven’t played it yet, but the universal acclaim it gets, I was expecting it to be near the perfect / masterpiece level.
I’m now playing the sequel and having a much better time, though it does lose some of the uniqueness of the first game in favor including more common elements seen in games of this genre.
How is it if you aren’t into poker? Since everyone describing it mention poker, I didn’t even look into it.
Balatro to me is a card/deckbuilding roguelike that just happens to use the poker rules because people are familiar with those and it helps shrink the learning curve.
The focus is not getting the best poker hand, but rather on finding a strategy that maximizes the chips you get with the tools you’re given each run. I just had a very successful run where I build a deck solely focused on getting “Two Pair” hands all the time.
Posting this just 4 days after the last weekly thread, to get it back to Fridays. Next one should be exactly 1 week after this, on next Friday, 24th May....
How long did it take you to beat Little Kitty, Big City? It looks really fun.
Didn’t track it but less than 5h. Really short game.
How are you liking Drainus compared to Lodoss War and Touhou? I know they are different genres, but still.
Liking it less than the metroidvanias, but as you said it’s a very different genre so it’s hard to compare. Still a great game, I even recommended it to a Gradius-loving friend of mine.
This was a fun little game. It takes a bit of inspiration of Untitled Goose Game as you play another small animal messing around in a city.
However, this one has a lot more focus on exploration and less on trolling humans. There’s a lot of places to climb/crawl, plenty of shiny things and hats to collect, plus some animals with funny dialogue to talk around in the city.
It definitely could use some polish - camera, controls and graphics all feel a bit janky, but it’s not too detrimental to the experience.
Slow progress this week, but I did finish the second case which was the good old “someone from the Wright agency gets accused of murder” case we get every game.
And now it looks like we’re going back to Phoenix’s misadventures in Khura’in. I wonder if Maya will manage to get in trouble again this game?
A shoot 'em up from Team Ladybug, the same developer as the the Lodoss War and Touhou metroidvanias I played recently.
I feel this one is inspired by the Gradius games, with you being able to configure your loadout with different options for attack, options, missiles and shields, and also the ability to choose the order you unlock these.
However, there’s some interesting twists to that formula. Upgrades are unlocked as you play, and you can adjust your loadout mid-game. When you get hit you lose one upgrade level, and you only die if you get hit while at zero upgrades. There’s a “reflect shield” mechanic that lest you absorb energy attacks and send them back to the enemies.
There’s also a storyline of sorts, but I can’t comment much on that as I’m still fairly early in the game.
‘My whole library is wiped out’: what it means to own movies and TV in the age of streaming services (www.theguardian.com)
ANIMAL WELL – Launch Trailer – Nintendo Switch (youtu.be)
Helldivers 2 Players Express Frustration On Steam As It Will Soon Require A PSN Account (www.gameinformer.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/14764738...
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-04-28
Playing Kingdom Come Deliverance. Tried fighting a few people / bandits, but they just kill me so easily, apparently I have to take it slow, and do other stuff to get strong (or I can just rush the main quest which is easier, but I don’t to do that)....
Nintendo Switch 2 report details magnetic Joy-Con, Pro Controller compatibility (www.eurogamer.net)
9 R.I.P. | Announcement Trailer | Nintendo Switch (www.youtube.com)
Visual novel by Idea Factory, coming in 2024.
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-04-07
Still playing Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs. I am very close to the end now....
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-04-13
Finished Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs. The last few bosses were pretty time taking, they had huge amount of health and took waaaaaaay too long to beat....
Little Kitty, Big City – Release Date Reveal – Nintendo Switch (www.youtube.com)
Releasing May 9
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate – Announcement Trailer – Nintendo Switch (www.youtube.com)
Coming in July....
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-05-05
Finished Ori and the Blind Forest. It’s a really good game, very polished, visuals and sound are great, but some part of design feels a bit dated, or well they require very twitchy reflexes. Other than that though, loved the game. Highly recommended for any metroidvania fans....
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-04-20
Finished Cat Quest II. I love how polished the game is....
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-05-13
Finished Azure Striker Gunvolt, but since it ended in a cliff hanger, started (and finished) Azure Stricker Gunvolt 2 (both comes in same bundle). The second game is very similar to the first one, but with some more powers, another playable character, and QoL features....
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-03-31
Last weekly thread of March!...
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-05-17
Posting this just 4 days after the last weekly thread, to get it back to Fridays. Next one should be exactly 1 week after this, on next Friday, 24th May....