Topic: The PlayStation Fan Thread

@Octane Even as a Detroit fan I say that's just plain gross. Detroit's very cool, very different, but SOTC is what video games are for.

Oh, an open world survival game you say? That's cool, what could go wrong?

I missed the clickers in the trailer. The amount of sheer gore and abuse in the TLoU trailers is just....there's limits I think to what I'll put up with. I'm with Ralizah, I'll buy it when it's $10, and keep it with 1 that I got for $10 and not play it still.

Whats not to get about the popularity of the Last of Us? I’ve always been fascinated by post apocalyptic scenario’s and man, TLoU does not disappoint. The whole vibe of people relying on their primal need to survive is illustrated quite well. Depection of how people change (Joel as a loving father, earnest, fast forward to twenty years later he’s become a loner who slowly starts to find himself due to Ellie’s presence). Some great character moments too, like everything including David. Can’t wait for part 2.

Currently playing through Uncharted 4 and Spidey. Prey and Yakuza Kiwami on the backburner.

@Octane Never going to happen. Game Freak is lazy and terrible at optimizing games for the platforms they release on. With that said, I've enjoyed most of the Pokemon games I played, and I expect I'll like the new gen. I just couldn't get into Sun and Moon because I couldn't walk five feet without the game ripping control away from me.

Let's Go is incredibly charming looking, although I'm still very iffy on the lack of random battles. Pokemon roaming around in the wild would look great if the environments were to scale, but the new presentation style only serves to illustrate how... condensed Kanto really was. The remastered soundtrack is awesome, though. I'm not in a huge hurry to get it, but I think I'll enjoy it.

Oh! I forgot about Catherine: Full Body. Not first-party, but another Japanese exclusive for the system. I'll probably be picking that up as well.

@NEStalgia I agree, but what can you do about it? The Last Guardian wasn't exactly a hit either. I am looking forward to their next game more than anything else though.

Well, 1) it's not online, and 2) it's not Bethesda

If you have it, you should give it a go. Would be a waste of those 10 bucks to not give it a try.

@Sadist Is Prey any good? It's one of those games I recognise by name, but it completely flew under my radar. Screenshots looks pretty neat, but it's Bethesda? I read it's a horror game, like quick-paced jump-scare horror or Alien Isolation horror? I can deal with the latter.

@Ralizah Is that coming to the Switch? I think someone made a joke about the PS4 release on PushSquare; Catherine: Partial Body

It looks like an upscaled 3DS game to me. Compare it to Super Mario Odyssey and the differences are clear. I get that it's a quick cash grab to cash in on the GO crowd, but still. It's a game they're selling for €60, but it feels like a budget game to me. Pokemon roaming around is neat, but I have two issues: There's no interaction between the Pokemon and the environment. They spawn at random and just walk a random path on the map. It's the same for every one of them. If they want them walking around, I'd like to see differences in behaviour, skittish Pokemon running away (like that Golisipod thing in SM), agressive Pokemon more prone to attacking the player if you get to close. Pokemon hiding in trees, under rocks, etc. And I also like them to give the tall grass some functionality. I liked how certain Pokemon in the gen 3 remakes had their tails sticking out of the grass. If they made it so that smaller Pokemon were still somewhat hidden in the tall grass, you wouldn't immediately be spoiled if you entered a new route. Part of the excitement was always finding out what new Pokemon you can find on a given route. Having them all appear in front of you, like a fish tank filled with fish at a sushi restaurant kinda ruins it IMO. Would be cool if you could throw Poke Balls in real time at the Pokemon, or walk up to them and engage with them in battle. There's so much they can do, but none of that will make it into next year's game unfortunately.

Anyway, where's Pikmin 4?!

I've heard very good things about Prey, which is a shame because it's been on sale so many times and I still haven't had time for it. I tried the hour long demo they had before release and I was very impressed with it.

@Ralizah I'd say that the removal of random battles in Let's Go isn't terribly big. It's undoubtedly a much easier experience with the battles compared to past games (although past games were easy as hell as well), but random battles in hindsight were never terribly interesting.

You could make the argument that the new catching mechanic is a lot more RNG-based than the old method and therefore that drags the game down, but the actual removal of random battles... I wasn't losing sleep over it.

@Octane Nope. Catherine: Full Body is exclusive to Playstation, which means there's no getting around any censorship the corporate authoritarians in California decide to impose on it. I keep hoping that Atlus will get with the program and also release its games on PC, but there seems to be no indication of that happening.

Anyway, I'm not excited about the idea of supporting a censored product, but I am looking forward to that release, so we'll have to see how the game turns out next year.

@EvilLucario Besides the streamlining of the entire Pokemon encounter process, I just feel like there was a certain... anticipatory pleasure in the random battles. The screen would flash, and you'd always have that brief moment of uncertainty, filled with infinite possibility, before the opposing Pokemon was revealed to you. This build-up always made it exciting when you encountered a new Pokemon that you hadn't caught yet.

There's no mystery in Let's Go. You see something milling around a patch of grass, you run up and catch it, and that's the end of it.

I'm not saying it necessarily ruins the game, but I do feel like, if they're going to remove the random battles, they should make changes to enemy AI, geography, and other aspects of the game design to account for this and make Pokemon encounters exciting again, just in a different way. Maybe in the 2019 game.

I think Game Freak's going to play it safe with Pokemon 2019, essentially have it play like the 3DS games but in HD. Pokemon's doing well enough that I don't think a BotW/Mario Odyssey transformation will happen anytime soon.

I'm at 95% completion for Spider-Man, so I should be able to finish it off over the weekend if things go as planned.

Just cleared the mission where you fight Rhino & Scorpion. It's a great game, but I'm not sure how I feel about the pacing of the non Spider-Man stealth missions. While they are a good way to shake things up every now and then, I think I can only recall one before the halfway point (and even then it was more or less the "training" mission), but once you get halfway through it seems like they're every other mission.

The Joel and Ellie relationship is what makes that game so perfect. Without that it would just be a well-made but generic zombie game.

Part of why I'm not that hyped for the sequel is that I don't think they'll be able to replicate that character dynamic. Middle aged man with young girl is the magic combo. In a non-creepy way.

Same. I don't think they'll have had long enough development time for something as epic as BotW.

Wow. I did not expect to like Nioh, the game is superb. The atmosphere is fantastic, the controls are super tight(love it when a game is nice and tight) and the framerate is solid. But compare it to Dark Souls and Bloodborne, there's a clear gap in quality and polish. But it has enough to be different from both of these titles, would totally recommend this game.

@MsJubilee Yeah I rank Nioh quite a bit below Bloodborne and Dark Souls 1 (haven't played 2 and 3 yet). While the actual fighting is perhaps the best out of those games, the enemy variety and level design are nowhere near as good as BB and DS1.

That said, Nioh is still awesome and I recommend people to play it anyway. If you're looking for a Souls game that has a better combo game, Nioh can scratch that itch.

Just finished up Spider-Man!

Great game! I think they could have paced the boss fights & non Spider-Man stealth a bit better (both mission types were very back loaded, to the point that on more than one occasion, supervillains were teamed up & didn't get their own fight), but overall very minor complaints. Everything else from the combat, to the webslinging around the city, and the story were great (I even teared up during a certain scene at the end). Heck, I even enjoyed the little puzzles in the lab as a way to unwind. All the general Marvel references were neat too (whether it be the Wakandan embassy, Avengers Tower, Matthew Murdoch's business card, Jessica Jones' office, the obligatory Stan Lee cameo, and many more).

@Octane

Can’t really say as I’m at the beginning, but the start was pretty neat. Prey is considered to be a divisive game by some, which means I’ll probably like it. I have a few friends who like it though.

Just started up Yakuza Kiwami for the first time. Not much to say on it yet though. Combat feels loose compared to Spider-Man, but that's understandable & I'm sure I'll get used to it. Love the vibe of the neon lit cityscape though.

Also picked up Titanfall 2 Ultimate Edition, School Girl Zombie Hunters, and Unraveled in the flash sale for $23 (also used the 20% off code that came with my system).

To be fair, it's divisive because Prey (2006) was a very different game compared to its contempories, and certainly a very different game from Prey (2016), not to mention the circumstances surrounding the cancellation of Prey 2 that many were looking forward to, and how they clearly just slapped on the Prey title so they could say they did something with the brand.

I mean, it's a bllatant System Shock clone, one that wears its influence on its sleeve. Of course it's going to have an audience. I personally still dislike it for various reasons outside of those listed above - I consider it to be a crap game that just exacerbates the worst elements of the System Shock series - pretentious storytelling, poorly-lit hallways, confusing map design that's extrordinarily boring to backtrack through, some of the most underwelming gunplay I've ever experienced in an FPS, and poorly concieved horror elements that never seem to gel will the design of the rest of the game. At least they continued the legacy of System Shock by making my entire experience with it feel like a massive waste of time.

I know not everyone will agree - I noticed a lot of people can overlook the faults of games like System Shock and BioShock and just focus on the cool powers and the sense of dread and mystery it can instill, but...that's just not enough for me. I need to have fun, too.

Wow, I FINALLY defeated the boss of the funeral mission in Yakuza Kiwami. It feels like it took me an hour to whittle that guy's health down. I haven't had nearly that much issue with anything else in the game so far, so surely there must have been something I was doing wrong, but I can't think of what. I ended up switching to the Rush fighting style, and got a few quick strikes in after dodging his attacks, which is how I beat him but it took forever.

The playStation Awards Live from Japan :

I leave my PS fate in the hands of The Internet. O' Oversears of truth and knowledge, I beseech thee, what must'th I do?

My PS4 Pro is still beeping chronically. It's getting worse. It functions just fine, but it's frustrating as heck to keep hearing it beeping while it runs. What do you guys think the odds are of a cooler running PS4 Pro Slim emerging in the next 6 months? Or a price cut? Or just hold off for PS5 and hope it's fully backward compatible.

It's a hard call since I don't have nearly the amount of games on PS4 I have on X1X. Over 200 on X1X. About 28-30 games I want to play and have on PS4 (excluding PSVR.) I have some on PS4 I re-bought on X1X like Nier, so I've moved them to the "redundant" pile. And with FF and WoFF moving to Switch...that thinned the RPG pile as well. maybe DQXI as well eventually, so it's by far my least used system I think, but there's still big games ahead for me like GoW that I barely touched so far. It's not an easy call to just buy a new one and replace it since 30 games is a lot but not "mountain of games" level like if it were the 1X.

@Dezzy I agree that the Joel, Ellie relationship is really what made TLoU work. I'm still no fan of the game by any stretch, despite owning it, but that's the part that tempts me to want to get into it. Part 2....I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be drawn into. Young adult girl, some strained gala party from the E3 trailer about her love life, and then a bunch of sadistic human murdering. Plus zombies. It's so....I mean she's just a younger Nathan Drake but with (more) zombies? What made it special seems to be missing.

@MsJubilee I still love Nioh way more than Bloodborne.

@Octane Prey (Bethesda) is horror-horror. Jump scares and the like. Off the radar for me, and almost certainly for you. It's a shame. They ruined it. I don't understand why Bethesda would buy games like Fallout and Prey only to turn them into something they aren't. It's really ruined my view of Bethesda. Even EA has more respect for the source material they buy. And that's saying something. Prey (original) was "horror".....it was very graphic and grotesque, but was really cool, different.....basically it was a more graphic and visceral Star Trek Borg cube, with the processing of abducted humans and some very disturbing scenes such as the possessed school bus kids. The original Prey you might like. It was a fun over the top thing. Playing on radios throughout was Art Bell, as himself, hosting his actual show. You're in the UK so you might not be familiar, but he was kind of a 90's pop culture thing, an AM radio show in the middle of the night about alien sightings, crop circles, Area 51, etc. Having him as himself in the game covering the abductions as you're on the processing ship was just crazy fun. You were a Native American kind of biker-rebel guy from the reservation who could spirit walk through the ship, go through portals, etc.

Flash forward to Bethesda's all too serious survivors on a doomed, dark, space station with an unknown xenomorph predator invading.......bleh.

@NEStalgia Has barely anything to do with anything, but I hate it when my PS4 beeps when I turn it back on. It makes me feel like it's a bomb waiting to go off.

I do have Prey on PC from a random sale, I might try that after Bloodborne, Smash Ultimate, and Dark Souls II and III. And slog through Witcher 3's combat.