Topic: The PlayStation Fan Thread

@EvilLucario If by 'fine' you mean they're basically not using them now because they're too slow. That said, cartridges are too small and expensive to be a viable alternative at the moment. Hopefully, we'll see memory keep falling in price to the point where cartridges are viable again the generation after next. It'd be nice to be able to play a game as soon as you get home.

@Octane I really was enjoying it up to that point, so I'm sure I'll enjoy it again once I pick it up. But the janky AI on that particular collosus was certainly frustrating, no question. As it stands though. I'll probably be able to finish the game in another 4-6 hours I'd think? We'll have to see.

@link3710 As a storage medium it's doing its job right now, is my point. And I don't see that going away for the next generation just yet. The generation after that, we'll see, but not in the immediate future I'd say.

@link3710 Haha, yeah, SotC is one of those "old game design" kind of games so it's frustrating at times wanting you to do just the right thing. That's the one catch with these old remastered games. Change it too much and it's no longer the genuine game, change it too little and it's still a dated design

I still need to get .hack. I haven't played far into P5 yet, but it's amazing so far if you're into Atlus. It may even best P4! GoW is fantastic. I personally despise Bloodborne entirely, but EvilLucario loves it

Yeah, I do like the Uncharted series, definitely. I just think ND overall is overrated, including with Uncharted, much as I like it, it's clear what its flaws are, and I like it in spite of them without deifying ND

I'm surprised you don't do horror either, thought it was just me. I still haven't delved far into TLoU (even that amount of zombies kind of bugs me.) But after I saw the sequel trailer where it was a torture porn simulator that went out of it's way to correlate zombies and lesbians (accidentally, of course, but that's the image it suggests) I don't regret it I own it....someday....at the bottom of the backlog....

Second Son is the game that killed the stellar inFamous series. And it's a crying shame they didn't do an HD port of them either That was clearly a rushed game to fit launch window, much like KZ Shadow Fall that felt like it was half the game it was intended to be just to race to get something for launch window. inFamous 1 was fantastic, and inFamous 2 did some things better, some worse. Second Son changed the vibe, feel, grit, tone, setting, character, everything. Instead of a dark edgey electricity anti-hero in a gritty, dark NYC, or the same hero, turbocharged, at the end of his rope in a dark New Orleans swamp town amidst doom itself, we get Snow from FFXIII in chirpy happy, utopian Seattle. It wasn't a bad game, I enjoyed what was inFamousy about it, but it wasn't really inFamous at all. That was one of my favorite Sony franchises, then they pooped out that rushed, half a game, killed the franchise, and that was that. If you ever get access to a PS3 or PS Now, definitely play the first. The gameplay is dated of course, but the comic book mood was spot on. You'll like it way more than Second Son.

@redd214 I thought uncharted was always in easy mode? Personally I still think inFamous 1 stomps Second Sun. It was fun but very incomplete, and the tone shift really works against it. Gritty, dark city and crawling the sewers to start the generators while a complete social pariah that is known to all to have demolished half a city is a very different vibe than....Snow....with fire powers....in a happy and bright city that seems to not have any pressing issues other than arresting everyone that has magic powers. First Light did have a little more of the Cole feel back, but only briefly.

@link3710 @EvilLucario Heck MS hasn't decided yet if the Scarlett will have a disc drive at all, and may resort to the disc exchange for digital codes trope. I think they probably will have a drive (or offer one model with or without) but I'm wondering how Sony will handle that since they were the first to push to digital-only, and a streaming service. Which is a joke. Likely 8k consoles with digital-only? So, like 200GB downloads minimum per game?

@link3710 Yeah, I guess. I find that drawing its attention and making sure he sees you entering the underground hallways helps a lot. It's hard to say, I know what to do, and how to make the AI what I want to do. It's like when I say that the pachinko and lily pad levels in Mario Sunshine are perfectly playable, everyone always thinks I'm nuts

4-6 hours sounds about right if you're not going for completion.

@NEStalgia I think your for to tag me

It was the PSX trailer, right? Yeah, that was definitely not something you'd expect from TLOU. I guess that's what they were going for. The gameplay trailer from E3 is the trailer I was waiting for. We'll see where the story goes though. With Neil Druckmann behind the project, you never know.

It helps that the clickers in TLOU won't attack you as long as you don't move (in theory). It scratches that horror itch for me without being a full on horror game. I don't mind horror films though, but playing them? Nope! It's unfortunate. Now that I have a PSVR and the only big game that's completely playable in VR is RE7...

I think I've watched some gameplay of the other games after I beat Second Son. I liked the idea of playing as a different protagonist with different powers. Electricity powers sounds cool. Smoke is lame, but it was basically fire. Neon looked very nice, I liked it. What was the last one? TV power? Cheesy 90s video game power? I didn't like that one at all lol.

@NEStalgia I'm certain I'll love Persona 5 honestly, I've always wanted to get into the series but with how expensive the older games are (and with Innocent Sin being impossible to play unless you own a PSP) I've always put it off. Guess I'm not going to play them in order after all. Still hoping the other Personas come over to PS4 or Switch at some point so I can give them a shot too. As for Bloodborne... well, it was super cheap. Worst case scenario I won't like it, but for what I paid I don't mind if I don't.

I actually have completed both inFamous 1 and 2, they were great games. The only PS3 games I played at all, since my friend in college was obsessed with them. Too bad to hear about Second Son, though I knew the reception was lukewarm.

Yeah, horror really isn't my thing. I don't like to play games to be scared so why get into that genre? The only exceptions I may make are for are Resident Evil 4 and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem... someday.

What is that thing ?
PS Vita ?
Different Sony machine ?

@Anti-Matter

@link3710 Bloodborne is phenomenal. It's hard and has some nasty as hell bosses, harder than anything in Dark Souls 1, but oh so satisfying to take down.

While games are so large for Sony/Microsoft consoles, cartridges will never be a feasible option. Nintendo gets away with it because their games' file sizes are small. Disc and digital followed by digital and streaming followed by streaming only looks like Sony and Microsoft's future to me.

Man, it's going to be tough avoiding impulse buys on my PS4. Checked the store the past couple days and while I didn't bite on anything, it was tempting seeing Titanfall 2, Unravel, & Burnout Paradise at $10 each yesterday, and Ys Origins at $8 today (not to mention that Batman: Arkham Knight & InFamous Second Son seem to be $20 at their base price now). If I hadn't done any Christmas shopping this past weekend I probably would have nabbed a couple things.

Also, I'm now 75% done with the main story in Spider-Man (just completed the mission where you had to fight Li on the subway).

BTW, I completed all the challenge missions but lost to Taskmaster (I was actually doing really good until he knocked me down into a tight space and the camera zoomed in so close I couldn't see him or the spider sense indicator & got pummeled). Will he randomly challenge me now, or will I have to go out of my way to grind high scores in the challenge missions for him to show up again?

I feel I have to ask this too much for my own good, but does The Tetris Effect have colour blind modes?

Ok, impressions on Darksiders III as promised:

I didn't play too too far into it, but I played enough to get a decent feel for it. I'm going to side with the favorable reviewers here. It's a pretty good game. Not perfect, but it's Darksiders, it's always been rough. I do prefer the Zelda-like that was 1 & 2. I loved the looter RPG of 2 but it was admittedly a bit much. So by that standard, III isn't as good to me simply because I prefer that rarely done genre. I played on the X1X and it ran relatively stable 30FPS and looked good....I can't comment on if the PS4/Pro optimization or visuals are good or not. Some critics said it looked dated. I don't really think so, at least not on the platform I played on. It's not pushing graphical boundaries but it looks modern enough.

It doesn't have as drawn out a story as II, but Fury's a good character overall. The game is a bit more linear like the first one. Combat isn't DMC, and it's not exactly Soulsborne, in that it's a little easier, but I'd compare it more to being maybe more like Nier:A which is a little Soulsborne already, but faster paced and less touchy. Still combat is challenging and trash mobs can hurt you bad, unlike 1 & 2. The key seems to be to do perfect guards as often as possible. So far combat is fast, fluid, mostly fun, a little too hard until you figure out to spam perfect guards. Some enemies hit too hard and don't give you a chance to recover/leave before continuously striking. Given how rare health is, that's problematic. The camera more than once got behind some game object which prevented me from seeing enemies. That's certain death. Bosses are excessively brutal. They're a little more of a "light environmental puzzle/platformer boss" than Soul's pure damage bosses, which is just right for Darksiders, but they otherwise play like Souls bosses. I agree with CanisWolfred's mention of reviews citing checkpoints. Backtracking is extensive if you lose a boss. Like Dark Souls, though, but with a lot more enemies on the way back.

Ultimately the game's primary con isn't want it doesn't do, it's what it does do: It sticks uncomfortably close to being a straight up Dark Souls clone in a happier world. It's not that it isn't good at doing it, and it's not that it doesn't play somewhat differently as a much more offensive and much less defensive game than Soulsborne. But it keeps the formula close enough that if it were a Tencent game we'd be rolling our eyes. Right down to corpses littered about as loot boxes for souls, getting 2 healing items to use as potions, though they replenish occasionally through random drops, and don't seem to replenish at any healing locations like bonfires do. You can buy healing shards for souls though which makes healing somewhat more available than Dark Souls in theory, but in practice if you want to buy levels, you have to be lean on crystal purchases. With the fact that it actually sticks to a souls currency, actually has items called "hollows", it's too close a clone to not call them out on it. OTOH "a slightly different clone of current popular game's formulas" is what Darksiders has been from the start. DS1 was a clone of Zelda and GoW 2, DS2 was a clone of Zelda and WoW, and DS3 is a clone of Souls and GoW 2. It's too on the nose this time. But that doesn't diminish it. it has harder difficulty modes that are probably unfair, but otherwise might be "Souls lite" for a lot of people, and the mix of a happier environment and less obtuse systems makes it perfectly inviting. I just don't know how a "hard for the sake of being hard" design will serve this series that was always more hack & slash. I also feel that the Souls system might exist as cover for a smaller game by keeping you repeating areas and bosses often. With only 7 bosses and the first one being more or less an prologue, that's not a whole lot of destinations.

Overall, though, I'm happy with the game. I'm disappointed I'm not getting more of what I loved of the first two, but taken on its own it's a fun game and a lighter twist on the Souls formula. I wish it had more of it's own identity, gameplay wise, than wearing it's Souls clone status on it's sleeve. It's infuriating at times with the bosses, and that might get old, but that's more me having a love-hate relationship with Soulsborne as a formula than game specific issues. Also, I did preorder with 10% off the deluxe edition that will be getting 2 large-ish sotry DLCs later, so that might expand the size of the game considerably by the time it's done and in a complete edition. Excluding the prologue boss, that's a good 30% extra boss/traversal content.

I think the negative critical reviews were excessively negative (PS4 performance issue possibilities aside.) It doesn't live up to what many people hoped it would be based on 2, and the "but it's not Dark Souls" argument gains some sincerity since the game tries so hard to be Dark Sols and remind you it's doing so, but if you view the game for what it is rather than trying to shoebox it as a 1:1 comparison to its predecessors and inspirations, it's a solid, fluid, fun game with some modest rougher spots that you'd expect from a Darksiders game.

The 66% Metacritic is woefully uncalled for unless it's a result of console-specific performance problems. At worst the game should be a 75%. If DS1 & 2 are averaging around 82%, III really should be between 75-80%. PC and XBox Metacritic keeps it a bit closer to that in the 70-72% range. Still too low, but nowhere close to how bad PS4 reviews make it seem. It's either down to some serious hardware specific problems I can't comment on, or some degree of "fanboyism" swaying PS4 reviewers to view anything that's not God of War and Spiderman more negatively than deserved.

The real competition for this game will come, not from GoW18, which is, realistically, very different, but from DMC5 and Sekiro. Compared to those it will likely be unfavorable, however it's colorful fantasy/apocalypse and lighter combat still make it worthy to play on its own.

@Octane Toio looks awesome. Way better than Labo. Want, want want!

@EvilLucario "Bloodborne is awesome if you're a masochist who enjoys suffering, through requiring endless trials requiring the reaction times of a fighter pilot while aimlessly meandering in a bland empty world for no other reason but to test your reaction times." There, I fixed, it, right @Ralizah?

Seriously, though, I still feel it's From's weakest product. While not everyone will hate Bloodborne as much as I do, I don't think it compares favorably to their own games. I can't really put a finger on what I hate about it. I tried it before Souls and it made me think I hated souls. Then I found out that while I'm very very bad at souls I also find it addictive in a way. So I took my newfound Souls knowledge back to give Bloodborne a try again. And even did it as a Halloween week thing so I'd be all in the mood for it. I tried to like it. I wanted to like it. I wanted to believe the hype finally. But, no, something doesn't click/addict in Bloodborne the way Souls does. Unlike Souls I found I had no real motivation to make me keep trying. Not sure what it is about it, it's just....bland. And the "dream" as a respawn area doesn't help. Though you love hard for the sake of hard so I shouldn't be surprised you're so high on it. You're that, like 1% of gamers that probably thinks Battletoads is fun.

@Grumblevolcano Streaming ultimately uses more bandwidth for heavy gamers if 4k streaming because you're effectively always downloading. Though I don't think that future is as soon as Ubi thinks it is. XBox's Phil Spencer has commented how Game Pass actually results in more game sales rather than less. As long as people are going to shell out purchase prices based on sub services, purchase isn't going away.

@RR529 LOL yeah, welcome to the buying spree.

@Knuckles-Fajita The better question with Tetris Effect is: Does it matter if it has a color blind mode? Can you see WTF is happening either way? I doubt it.

@NEStalgia I like the combat well enough in Bloodborne, and didn't find it too horrendously difficult (if anything, I struggled more against early bosses in DS1), but... yeah. It's just... empty. Bland. Boring. Lifeless. Samey environments. No interesting characters.

I've been thinking about giving it another chance next year. I mean, I own it digitally, so I'm stuck with it.

@Ralizah I got it for free and feel like I overpaid.

What gets me about combat in Bloodborne versus Souls is cheap enemy placement. Ranged shooters tucked in places you don't see them until it's too late, ranged shooters up on elevated areas where you have to fight half a dozen monsters on the ground while dodging their shots before you can get to them. There's just a lot of cheap placmement there. Nioh is also cheap, but somehow manages to not be as bland and uninteresting. I resort to button mashing in Bloodborne and lose, mostly because I'm bored out of my mind, not concentrating on it, and would rather be playing anything else. Imagine how shocked I was when that didn't happen with Souls!

I'd be curious if you try though. I tried that and my opinion remained unchanged.

December plus games announced. It crazy Onrush was a full retail release 6 or so months ago now free on plus!

Iconoclasts looks neat anyone have any experience with it?

@NEStalgia I paid $50 for it near launch. I'll never not be bitter about that.

Anyway, Bloodborne is R1: The Game. You can roast the majority of enemies from early-through-mid-game with smart R1 spam.

Combat's a breeze if you can get the hang of parrying, too. And learning to dodge INTO attacks.

@redd214 I don't own Onrush or Iconoclasts yet, so I'm glad there's something for me to play this month. I've also never tried out Papers, Please on a Vita, having only played it on PC years and years ago.

SOMA is philosophically-interesting sci-fi disguised as a horror game. I'd recommend it.

@Ralizah SUCKER!! SUCKER!!!! (Looks at launch day Fallout 76 install........oh........trade you?!) I think I'd rather have Bloodborne for $50 It's an awful game, but at least it actually is one.

Maybe I was being too strategic in my battles (Plus I was using the axe, so it was a little slower.) Mostly without motivation to play, it really does turn into failed button mashing for me. It's a good time to catch up on NL threads with the other hand.

@redd214 !Steins Ga.....PS3.....Nevermind

@NEStalgia Haha, I was gifted Fallout 4 at launch on PC and... honestly, I hate that game. I hate its boring, empty world, the still janky combat, the weird changes they made to established things (why is Power Armor mechanized now?!), the horrendous crafting system you really have to engage in if you want to get cool weapons, etc.

I think I'm done with Bethesda. I went back to Skyrim and... I mean, it's better, but it's still so janky that I just want to put it down and play something else.

I remember liking Fallout 3 a lot back in the day. I wonder if I just didn't know any better?