Redfall was weird, they were positioning it as such a big game for Xbox, but all promotional stuff and early previews made the game seem so uninteresting that I don't know why they were pushing it so hard. I understand that people generally love Arkane games, but Redfall never looked good in my opinion.
that said, Redfall has definitely put a ton of pressure on Starfield to be the real deal. that presentation they did on it seemed really cool, but then little details have trickled out which could hurt the experience, such as capped at 30 fps on Xbox (to me not a huge deal). no mounts (ie: cruisers, bikes, etc...) to travel around the planets, seems like at best you can use the boost pack, which apparently will be woefully inadequate for traversing entire planets. also, while aiming for realism they said only 10% of the planets will have life on them, which makes me wonder how exciting the 900 planets sans-life will be.
I don't mean to sound negative about a game I haven't played, because overall I'm sure it'll be great and could potentially be Game of the Year over TotK if it does enough right!
Oh trust me I'm in the same boat. It could be amazing and I really hope it is. But I get the impression the planets aren't really meant to be extensively explored. Like they've said that of the 10% that have life, for most of them the game will procedurally drop interesting places for you to see near wherever you land. So I do wonder how many times I'm going to land and discover generic "abandoned robot facility" #5 within walking distance of my craft that's overrun with nameless space pirates. Because that will get very boring very quickly. But I'm hoping that there actually is an ability to explore and not just get fed procedurally generated content within half a mile of wherever I land.
Just finished RDR2 on Steam. What a magical game. Epilogue really slows it down but it was a good ending and I'm glad Micah got his shit handed to him.
My only complaint is the honor system should be more severe. I struck a balance. I liked to do stranger/side missions/helping folks which gave me good honor points. But I'd also straight drop turds on the roadway for bumping into me and then killing any witnesses who came upon me looting. But then I could go into a town and say hello to a bunch of folks and get honor points. So I pretty much stayed right in the middle w/ usually a slight dip toward dishonorable most of the game.
I played - as I saw someone on Reddit suggest - by making choices as I thought Arthur would in the context of the game. He obviously had a code but that code was reinforced by violence.
But in the end, I made a couple of choices - like helping Widow Downes - at the end of the game that just shot my honor through the roof from the mid point.
Great game. Huge world. Lots to do. Lot of miles on my horse. Also, fuck the game for killing my white arabian that I spent most of the game bonding with at the end.
Previously had only spent $10 on Cyberpunk 2077 by grabbing the PS4 disc on sale and taking advantage of the free PS5 upgrade. Picked my game back up the other month after over a year off and really got sucked in for a few weeks, and now I'm super stoked for Phantom Liberty.
Having to have the disc in to play even the digital PS5 upgrade irked me, so I ended up just preordering the discounted digital bundle with the Phantom Liberty DLC to give my disc drive a break. I think even with the discount and the earlier $10 disc I still paid less than the base game price, and even that is worth it at this point in my opinion.
I've played Diablos II and III without ever really connecting with them; I never get more than an hour or two into them before I lose interest. Not sure where the lack of connection comes from, but generally combat can feel like just spamming attack buttons. Anyway, I caved in bought Diablo IV despite past experiences, and I'll say this one's connecting a lot better for me. I'm playing as a necromancer; I love my little skeleton bros.
Does the sheer number of possible attributes to spend points on at level up make speccing hard? I feel like I'm just sorta picking at a buffet and then coming back to the table and realizing I got two fruit salads, mashed potatoes, and no entrees.
Tempted by this one. Haven't played a CRPG in ages, but this one looks so polished. And of course the hype with it being so long-awaited. May pick up at some point, there's just so much out this year.
Tempted by this one. Haven't played a CRPG in ages, but this one looks so polished. And of course the hype with it being so long-awaited. May pick up at some point, there's just so much out this year.
PGA Tour 2K23 is one of the PS Plus games of the month for August!!!!
I'll be for sure playing this. Tiger Woods was one of the games most played back when I was in college. I believe this is still the same franchise. And I'm cowries to see what the game is like 15+ years down the road.
PGA Tour 2K23 is one of the PS Plus games of the month for August!!!!
I'll be for sure playing this. Tiger Woods was one of the games most played back when I was in college. I believe this is still the same franchise. And I'm cowries to see what the game is like 15+ years down the road.
PGA Tour 2K23 is one of the PS Plus games of the month for August!!!!
I'll be for sure playing this. Tiger Woods was one of the games most played back when I was in college. I believe this is still the same franchise. And I'm cowries to see what the game is like 15+ years down the road.
So at around 85 hours, I decided to finish up Tears of the Kingdom. There was more of the depths to explore, and a bunch of side quests to do, but I've been in the mood to start something else, so I headed into the final mission. Marked for spoilers.
My first go at Ganondorf, I did NOT have enough gloom food, and had to go back to the surface and farm for sundelions.
The actual fight is such a step up from BotW's final boss, it's not even comparable. A true extension of the game's difficulty, which is probably the hardest in the series.
Moments I loved:
- When he enters his second phase, and his health bar just keeps going to the side of the screen. Excellent touch.
- The reveal of his dragon form. Don't think a scale like this has really been seen before in this series. Felt truly huge.
- When you finally kill him, and he fucking explodes into a mushroom cloud. So fucking sick.
As for the actual ending, I think it's maybe the most emotionally effective in the series. The final dive to reach for zelda + when you rendevous on the ground had me tearing up. When the new arrangement of Zelda's Lullaby kicked in, I might have shed a tear.
TL;DR: It was great, and love this series very much. Not without some criticisms of this one (the voice acting, the learning curve, some puzzles..), and some elements I liked more in Breath of the Wild. In tandem, though, these two games are a pretty incredible achievement. Nintendo the GOAT, and Aonuma is a genius.
If anybody else is one the fence, now's the time. The disc version is $50 off AND GameStop is giving at least $100 credit for both old PS4s and Xboxs. I got this thing half off.
So at around 85 hours, I decided to finish up Tears of the Kingdom. There was more of the depths to explore, and a bunch of side quests to do, but I've been in the mood to start something else, so I headed into the final mission. Marked for spoilers.
My first go at Ganondorf, I did NOT have enough gloom food, and had to go back to the surface and farm for sundelions.
The actual fight is such a step up from BotW's final boss, it's not even comparable. A true extension of the game's difficulty, which is probably the hardest in the series.
Moments I loved:
- When he enters his second phase, and his health bar just keeps going to the side of the screen. Excellent touch.
- The reveal of his dragon form. Don't think a scale like this has really been seen before in this series. Felt truly huge.
- When you finally kill him, and he fucking explodes into a mushroom cloud. So fucking sick.
As for the actual ending, I think it's maybe the most emotionally effective in the series. The final dive to reach for zelda + when you rendevous on the ground had me tearing up. When the new arrangement of Zelda's Lullaby kicked in, I might have shed a tear.
TL;DR: It was great, and love this series very much. Not without some criticisms of this one (the voice acting, the learning curve, some puzzles..), and some elements I liked more in Breath of the Wild. In tandem, though, these two games are a pretty incredible achievement. Nintendo the GOAT, and Aonuma is a genius.
I’m almost 300 hours in and still going, currently trying to locate all 58 wells.
I already found all 152 shrines and lightroots (I had to look up how to get to the last lightroot). Also found all 147 caves (had to look up the last two) and 20 Sage's Wills (also had to look up the last two). Annoyingly, the very last cave was the one that contained the climber's bandana, which would've been useful to have!
I think I have all the armor sets (I did look up where to find a few of them). I am NOT maxing them all out, nor am I finding all Koroks (though I gathered enough seeds to max out all my inventory slots… I’m currently in the 470-ish range).
And I completely agree that the final boss was far, far superior to BOTW’s… spidery Ganon was not very compelling, whereas the sword duel with Ganon in TOTK was legitimately awesome. And the dragon battle was 10 times more fun than shooting arrows up that BOTW’s hog Ganon’s ass. I’m not sure I’m with you on the difficulty level (if you invest the time and rack up hearts and meals, you basically become unbeatable)… though I did fail the protect Riju mission the first time around!
The biggest question for me now is whether I’ll want to start a new playthrough right away (in which I’d likely impose some sort of challenge upon myself, such as “no fast travel” or “no pouch expansion”), or whether I’ll be able to wait until the winter to do that.
Just playing around with the back compatibility emulator on the XBox Series X and I gotta say, this thing is damn impressive. Loaded up an old disc copy of Portal 2 (top 5 game ever made and the funniest game I've ever played) and switched the settings to quality mode. Look at what this thing is doing to this 13 year old game...
It's pretty wild. Definitely interested to see what Red Dead Redemption 2 looks like on here.
