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Playing Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice from a little back. So far, the story - albeit vaguely told as it gets filled in from your head voice - is really good and the execution of it is very well done with the whole psychosis thing. The fighting mechanics are not great. Switching from opponent to opponent is clunky and I find myself dodging backwards/running to put space to juggle multiple enemies rather than blocking and deflating enemies gracefully. But...I don't think it is the fighting that is going to end up carrying this game. It's the atmosphere and the story-telling and the mental health vehicle that is going to be doing the driving. I usually don't wear headphones when I play games because 1) My Audioengine speakers I use for my PC are nice and 2) I don't really like cutting myself off from the world when playing a game. But....I heeded the suggestion from the gamemakers to use cans for optimal experience. Verdict: worth it. I played at first with just the speakers (before I saw the notice about cans) and the voices were cool and I liked how they would pan from left to right to disorient you. But with headphones it really drives home that immersion and at times maddening effect of the voices. I also like what they did with the fact that, in one way, they're looked at as a sickness and something to be overcome but there are times when they are the only thing warning you of danger or giving you clues to what to do next (even if they just finished berating you). You can't just tune them out as chatter but actually need to pay attention to them (which is the point). Good game so far. Some of the execution is weak but you can tell a lot of love went into making it.
 
Wow, seems like a lot of their problems are rooted in a messy transition from top-down to 3d and handheld to console. Seems they could’ve avoided this by sticking with the class 2D format and taken a page out of the Link’s Awakening remake to give it pizzaz.

So it sounds like Death Stranding is the AAA title I’ll allow myself to splurge on this month. :p

DISCO ELYSIUM
 
Playing Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice from a little back. So far, the story - albeit vaguely told as it gets filled in from your head voice - is really good and the execution of it is very well done with the whole psychosis thing. The fighting mechanics are not great. Switching from opponent to opponent is clunky and I find myself dodging backwards/running to put space to juggle multiple enemies rather than blocking and deflating enemies gracefully. But...I don't think it is the fighting that is going to end up carrying this game. It's the atmosphere and the story-telling and the mental health vehicle that is going to be doing the driving. I usually don't wear headphones when I play games because 1) My Audioengine speakers I use for my PC are nice and 2) I don't really like cutting myself off from the world when playing a game. But....I heeded the suggestion from the gamemakers to use cans for optimal experience. Verdict: worth it. I played at first with just the speakers (before I saw the notice about cans) and the voices were cool and I liked how they would pan from left to right to disorient you. But with headphones it really drives home that immersion and at times maddening effect of the voices. I also like what they did with the fact that, in one way, they're looked at as a sickness and something to be overcome but there are times when they are the only thing warning you of danger or giving you clues to what to do next (even if they just finished berating you). You can't just tune them out as chatter but actually need to pay attention to them (which is the point). Good game so far. Some of the execution is weak but you can tell a lot of love went into making it.
Oh yeah! I started that one a while back. Was really liking it till I hit an especially frustrating fight sequence and set it aside. Need to get back to finishing it.
 
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Songs from the first 3 games (no Jak X Racing). First batch sold out pretty quick on LimitedRun, no idea on pressing size. Jak X also got a Limited Run PS4 release today, if you've gotten all of them you get a case with Jak 4 art to display with the rest.
 
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this time last year i was excited for the new pokemon main title thinking it would be interesting, but yeah i can’t deny that this game was completely rushed.

i kind of wish the pokemon company would be wise enough now to either have gamefreak hire more staff members to fully develop a title or just outsource some of the work to another developer like nintendo did with monolithsoft for botw
 
RE: RDR II for PC.

It seems the recent patch has made this very playable for me - and I don't have a great system. It's fun so far - a lot of horse riding.



I do think I'll be getting the PS5 next year - since I'm gonna be getting a new 4K tv after the new year anyway, I may as well wait a bit and get the PS5 instead of buying just a 4K blu ray player.
 
Same, best main series game in a while IMO despite my dislike of the last few this has got me excited again. I don't know where others were seeing performance issues, the best thing I can say about it is that it's finally a breeze to play, just snappy.
2 days in and we are only half way through the gym challenge. So many pokes to seek out! The wild area is great.

My one complaint is the catch leveling. It's frustratingly impossible to catch anything even just 1 level higher than your active pokemon, regardless of ball type. Stupid to have to swap out for a higher level just to clinch the catch.
 
2 days in and we are only half way through the gym challenge. So many pokes to seek out! The wild area is great.

My one complaint is the catch leveling. It's frustratingly impossible to catch anything even just 1 level higher than your active pokemon, regardless of ball type. Stupid to have to swap out for a higher level just to clinch the catch.

Right I think that’s strange too. When I first saw “it wouldn’t let it guard down” come up I was really confused, as fighting the high leveled Pokémon can get you crazy levels of EXP compared to older games. I’m assuming the balancing works better with inexperienced players who don’t know how to catch in the first place?

My only major complaint is that I’m still not down with the graphic execution. It’s just a very strange blend of photoreal environments and anime inspired character designs. I actually think the art direction and character design is the best it’s been in years but there’s just a weirdly uncanny aesthetic dissonance in the final game.
 
Stadia is suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch a mess.

I can't believe they thought this was a good way to launch a new platform. It will be buried before it's even given a chance, I have no idea what they were thinking.

If you think the external complaints are bad, you should see the internal OUTRAGE.

I should get my code to start at 12 EST today, but my hardware doesn't show up until tomorrow (Good job on that one guys) I'ma give it the three months I paid for, but it's not looking good.
 
Stadia is suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch a mess.

I can't believe they thought this was a good way to launch a new platform. It will be buried before it's even given a chance, I have no idea what they were thinking.

If you think the external complaints are bad, you should see the internal OUTRAGE.

I should get my code to start at 12 EST today, but my hardware doesn't show up until tomorrow (Good job on that one guys) I'ma give it the three months I paid for, but it's not looking good.
I've seen some positive reviews, but yeah overall the initial impressions seem less than great and most feel like they are paying to be beta testers for Google. aside from missing features at launch there have been some who have had a pretty bad experience using the service. I hope that you have one of the good experiences I have read/watched because it seems like when it's working it's pretty impressive!
 
It's a bummer about this news with Stadia. Not sure if I posted about it here before, but I'm part of the Xbox Insider program. I got accepted into the mobile streaming beta a while back. I've been trying out both the online streaming, i.e. games from the cloud, as well as streaming my console installed games to my phone. I was extremely skeptical about the cloud streaming, but it works basically perfectly. The games looked great, I haven't noticed any dips in frame rate or quality, and I've had no noticeable input lag, playing both Halo 5 and Gears 5 in online matchmaking. The games don't take any longer to load than they do on my console. The only real issues I've had are phone based, one being screen size, and the other being that if I accidentally bump something that takes me out of the app, going back in causes the entire game stream to restart, which kicks you out of matchmaking. It had me really hopeful for Stadia. Even if that fails, I'm sure MS and others will be jumping on it.

Also, the console streaming seemed to work better than the stream to PC function, though both work really well.
 
After playing with the controller on my bedroom TV and my Cellphone yesterday, I have a bit more hope for Stadia.

I only had issues when I was on my cellphone in my living room, and that's understandable as my wifi coverage is shite in my house and I don't have a fantastic connection to begin with. There was a bit of lag, but Destiny 2 was playable and looked surprisingly great on my tiny little phone.

I think Google did a poor job of illustrating that this isn't a game streaming service. It's not like getting Game Pass, or a Netflix account. It's more like renting a new console. The console is free if you don't care about high end graphics or store discounts. You just have to buy the games.

The biggest hurdle being that everyone already owns a PC or a console, so until the next gen is necessary, this option doesn't make a lot of sense, especially with no exclusives and a very sparse store.

The benefits will be fantastic when they finally implement all the features they touted.
-The seamless transition from screen to screen.
-Not needing to keep up with new consoles or PC hardware.
-Not having to install or update my games.
-The possibilities for multiplayer when your host is an enterprise datacenter.

This was a bold move on Googles part, one I don't think they entirely thought out. But if they can get the support, integrate everything with assistant and home automation... maybe. They probably jumped in a little too early, time will tell.
 
I see none of you heathens are discussing Death Stranding. Shameful.
Waiting for the PC release!

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