@PS5_LOVER21 Such a solid game I know... Ghost sits comfortably in my top #3 'open world' experiences, alongside BOTW and Elden Ring.
Visually immaculate, narratively immersive and solid gameplay to boot. I genuinely think it does a competent job also with integration of it difficulty modes, especially since the introduction of 'lethal'.
Burning question - have you played the Iki Island DLC yet? IMO, the DLC really stepped things up... and is probably one of the best DLC-examples I've ever played.
If you love Ghost, and it sounds like you do (!), I would implore you to purchase/play the DLC as soon as possible... especially while you're still riding the wave with this game and hungry for more.
Iki Island is a separate isolated story, and introduces some campy-horror style vibes... its like Ghost crossed with Resident Evil Village (in all the best ways!)
I did it! I made it through my God of War replay!! I spent like maybe 8 hours today just grinding this out, pushing through to the end. Some of the climactic story beats, twists and set pieces really do hit, but I liked this less this time around than I did the first time around, and I thought it was stupidly overhyped in the first place. Basically just put it on the lowest difficulty and mainlined it, just so I had the story fresh in my mind ready for the next one.
@Kairu I'm still completing it, I can't get past Ronin stealth mission, my friend says cause I don't have bells cause I only just got the bow
Didn't you say you finished it in your original post? If you have only just got the bow, you've barely even started.
Ghost of Tsushima is incredible though, for sure. Overstays its welcome, but I didn't appreciate just how good the combat truly is until I went to play God of War and realised that Ghost has set a bar so high for me action games are ruined forever.
Not fully sold on it yet, @RR529 .... Seems to be coming to Steam, which is always helpful for me, though! They'll show more between now & release, too
Stranger of Paradise is such a frustrating, experience.
I think the combat is so damn fun. I'd been away from it for a while, so there was some teething to relearn, but they present a very simple control scheme to access a lot of depth, which is how the best combat systems should be designed. It is all very intuitive and there is a real tangible satisfaction as you get better with weapons and your combos expand. There is some cross over between weapons, but they do manage to make each weapon feel unique enough from each other and some weapons present really unique styles over others. I have gone for a hybrid mage and melee, using spells to attack from afar and then switch to my melee class when my mana runs out and I need to get in close and personally to rebuild my meters.
The game makes you feel very powerful and while it isn't the prettiest game on PS5 (although I am playing in performance mode), the animations are so cool from finishers, to special moves, to just general attack animations.
I also think while loot is overload is very much a real thing here, making builds, playing around with the class and advance class system and spec'ing out your AI partners (which thankfully they don't force you to micromanage, as I really hated that stuff in like Tales or Xenoblade games) is again very rewarding, really giving back what you put into it, which is what I love about loot games like this.
Where the frustration comes in, are the bosses and I guess general difficulty design? But mostly difficulty design in relation to bosses specifically.
The game has three difficulties (and then I guess a forth at end game? And I guess technically 5, as you can also access an assist mode on top of the easiest difficulty) and the divide between each difficulty setting is astronomical. At the middle difficulty, moment to moment gameplay might be a little on the easy side, but the combat is so much fun it all balances out, that easyness just allows you to have fun messing around with combos, not making you stress about being brutally punished because of experimentation, but not so easy it feels like the game is just playing itself.
However, the difficulty spikes for every boss are absolutely astronomical basically every time. They spam attacks like a bullet hell game, can quite easily kill you in two hits - and that is more like one hit, as you have this whole break gauge thing and if the enemy breaks yours you get stunned, so they tend to break your gauge on the first hit and then kill you on the second while you can't defend yourself.
I know some people love being curbstomped by a game over and over again making slow crawls of progress until they beat a boss hours later, but I do not. I do enjoy the satisfaction of overcoming a challenge as much as anyone else, but there is a line for me between satisfaction and frustration which is very quickly crossed. Plus, if anything, inching closer just amplifies my frustration rather than increases my thrill, because I get so damn close, then know I have to go back and work through all the phases again.
The game does, after so many defeats, suggests you turn the difficulty down - something you can basically at any time anyway (you have these little checkpoint things, which allow you to access various things like the difficulty options, and they tend to stick these right next to bosses). There also isn't really any noticeable punishment for doing so, as you might get worse loot or whatever, but you are being flooded with it so quickly, you never hold to any loot for very long anyway.
The problem comes from the fact that difficulty between the bottom and the middle difficulty on the bosses is so massive, all achievement of beating the boss is lost. I'd rather they rebalance it to make the moment-to-moment gameplay slightly harder and smooth down the sharp spike that comes with the difficulty of bosses, or just give me more granular options rather than giving me the choice of being two shotted by the boss or me two shotting the actual boss.
I have accumulated 50 PS3 games until November 2022 with 7 of them are requiring PS Move to play.
I build my PS3 games collection pretty fast for almost 3 years. Woohoo...!
And I will get the PS Move set + Navigation controller at the end of year 2022.
I have been waiting patiently for 3 years to not playing my PS3 games with PS Move required until I get the PS Move set.
Now it's the time to get them.
Finally put some proper time into Miles Morales. I remember people really loved the original Spider-Man game, I thought it was fine but overrated, but MM feels like a significant improvement in almost every way.
So far, no crappy stealth sections - thank Christ. It has a really charming human story (albeit with some obvious twists and turns) - captured with really excellent performances, too. The performance plus RT mode on PS5 is just nuts, I am pretty sure my PC can't pump out visuals this high while remaining this smooth. Web swinging and doing tricks is a joy, and the number of unique animations for movement, swinging and combat is borderline nutty. Combat just looks so ***** awesome when it starts flowing, even if some things have less impact than I would like. Oh, and the set pieces moments? Just bonkers. Especially as they are delivered at such an impressive clip.
Only things I am not loving right now are Miles being made of paper. Fights are really chaotic and I kinda wish they'd just let them flow, but a gun user can melt Miles faster than I can say 'Miles', so you have to constantly break your own flow to prioritise targets, and it just feels really punishing whenever you notice one too late and just get instantly disintegrated.
I also think while combat looks really excellent, the controls sorta feel more convoluted than was maybe necessary, and especially given Miles has basically zero survivability. You get flooded with so many moves, but absolutely no time in the heat of battle to remember any of them and trying to remember the right combinations is quite literally a death sentence at times, so I had to get rid of basically 90% of the moves they taught me, so I could commit to memory the few things that reliably work in this unnecessarily sweaty combat sandbox.
Oh, and I thought the original Spider-Man had some crazy overrated open world design, and in some ways Miles may be even worse, they absolutely flood you with open world busyworld crap practically from the opening moments of the game, and nothing makes me want to do these tedious actives less than just absolutely drowning me in them.
Used the Miles Morales upgrade to get Spider-Man remastered on PS5. Boy howdy, when using that Raytracing Performance mode, it looks more "next gen" than many big games that came out this year. And my PC certainly can't produce visuals that strong while staying so smooth. Really makes you wonder how Miles Morales and Spider-Man can both look and feel so good, while games are coming out this year that don't look nearly as good and offer only 30 fps modes with no raytracing. I guess both Spider-Man games are just running on an incredible engine, with really well optimised code.
@Pizzamorg why do you think the studio is called Insomniac. No one ever sleeps they work 24/7 (somehow without crunch) and deliver beautifully games annually I can’t wait for Wolveriene
I hope it is like the old Wolverine Origins tie in game, that game was unironically excellent (unlike the movie it was based on).
@Pizzamorg I wish the Activision games weren’t delisted I orderd the Deadpool game from GameStop last month and it still hasn’t arrived. I would gladly try the wolverine game if I could find it.
After I tweeted that I actually thought about grabbing it myself to replay it again and found out what you said above about it being delisted. Sad.
I somehow managed to 99% percent Miles Morales, rather than 100% it, but either way, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. I'd happily put it up there as amongst my favourite games ever.
It seems like it is basically just a glorified tech demo to show off the "Next-Gen" power of the PS5, and if that was all this was doing, then not only did it nail the assignment, but it also absolutely exceeded all expectations in that regard. The performance raytracing mode is just insanity, really putting people to shame who release checkboard 4k 30fps games for consoles in 2022, when this exists. But it goes beyond just the performance, the animations, the facial capture, the virtual tourism aspect, the attention to detail. Just pure mind blowing madness at times.
But then on top of that you just have a really excellent story, told with wonderful characters. I remember the original Spider-Man's story being really unfocused and poorly paced, which robbed some of the biggest moments of their impact, but I thought every beat here was tuned to near perfection. Emotionally resonate character exchanges, grand set piece moments and quiet moments of peace and reflection all structured together to create a really refined flow through the narrative beats. Plus, if you include the post card hunt at the end, I cried multiple times during this game and I can count the number of games that moved me that much on my hands.
I do wish the game wasn't quite as difficult as it was as I do think that spoils some things and robs some momentum from the otherwise near pitch perfect story. I played on the amazing difficulty, and it was nuts like how quickly Miles would just be absolutely disintegrated if you engaged in open combat. Like you had all these incredibly animated moves, but you were kinda forced in every engagement to try and stealth takedown as many enemies as you could first and I think that was a shame.
I guess this is somewhat on me, as I could have just turned the difficulty down, but the Amazing difficulty felt like it was in a really good place when it came to bosses or set pieces, it was more like taking out enemy bases and stuff which had me wanting to snap my controller in frustration.
But yeah, given I didn't really love the original, I was amazed (sorta half pun) at how much this one really blew me away.
@Pizzamorg, congrats on finishing Miles! Just cleared it myself last week and it was an amazing experience, as you state.
BTW, I can almost guarantee that the thing locking you out from 100% is one of those tech caches. Each of the 6 enemy bases has one hidden away somewhere, and they can only be accessed while the mission is active, even the ones that take place on those open construction sites.
The Roxxon ones are always before the room with the enemies, hidden somewhere during the section where you have to unlock the door. Once you're in the enemy room you can't go back, so you'll have to start the base over again if you miss it.
The Underground ones are a bit more varied. I know I found one in the hidden room after you cleared all the enemies, but another one was just hidden behind a breakable wall out in the open (it still won't spawn unless the mission is active though, I believe).
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
Damn @RR529 you are right, looking at the map I'm missing two and one is locked behind each activity. I really don't want to do them again they are so frustrating 😠😆
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